Cella/Crystalis nerf

[cian2]

Yes these items with tier appropriate stats (like every other priest 1hnder in the game) are now useless because the proc is not a forever mana free heal which means that every item above it must also have a mana free heal or something else crazy powerful. You save mana compared to actually healing your group, and you get melee dmg while your (sic) at it.

We do not put every change made into the patch notes. You are not posting your opinion here, or making any sort of suggestion, you are just complaining and whining. I am tired of that on these forums, and I am tired at how it makes everyone else think they are just as entitled to it.

Trashed.

I'm not entirely sure why threads about this keep getting trashcanned. Nothing I posted in either of them could be construed as "whining" in the least bit, and they weren't posted on the suggestion forum. I also never suggested that they were "useless," I'm not sure why you are so defensive about this subject and putting words in my mouth Woldaff, but it doesn't come off as particularly respectful to the playerbase.

I know not everyone scours the spell changes in every patch, but it's a big change that people should be aware of, which is why I posted it. Going from a 10 or 15 mana drain on Cella to 160 or 240 is a pretty substantial change and I'm not sure why you are so against discussion regarding it. You are the man in charge, it's a position you chose to take, and so I'm sure the community would appreciate it if you would be willing to at least discuss things rather than instantly trashing posts and then responding to them so that no one can respond back, and most will not even see it.

Going from 5 to 80 is a big change, and while I wouldn't use the term useless, I certainly don't consider it worthwhile to melee with it anymore. The amount healed per mana drained is much, much less efficient than simply using Spire or summoned hammer and group healing. Personally, I've had to downgrade from Sharn'Ree's Verdict, to Cella, and now back down to Spire of Sympathy due to nerfs. If you don't like the progression of priest items, perhaps a more elegant change would have been to put Greater Circle of Healing (same proc as Spire) on Cella or Verdict at an increased, or even the same, procrate so that priests can have a more stable ladder of upgrades. It seems to me that your current opinion of what the items provide doesn't exactly exist that way (forever mana free heal) in the actual game. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on why this needed to be changed.

I hope that others can offer their opinions and you can provide us your vision of priest weapons, or at least discuss your decision with us. Getting all defensive about it doesn't help anyone.

 

[Zapple]

Here is how these items worked for anyone who has no idea how they worked or what they did...

You auto attack a thing with it and it procs, sometimes. Cella and Crystalis procced "Circle of Healing" (base heal of 99 at level 65) which with heal inc mods, codex and so on, on a maxed out cleric with max alteration mod, archaic, and so on would heal for about 250 non-crit. This is non-controllable and luck-based. It has a detrimental that drains mana. Used to be 5 per proc. Now it's a whopping 80 which makes it not worth using at all. I'll get to that. Cella would proc the heal up to 3 times based on the number of targets it hit (a target AE-- would usually hit 1 mob + the user for 2 heals).

Any "number-crunching theorycrafting" about the actual efficiency and heal output of these weapons is utterly useless because any player doing content anywhere near the tier you got these weapons would not be able to attack 100% of the time and would absolutely NEED to break off to cast heal spells. Frequently.

These weapons were largely used in a skill-based manner that added a new dimension to playing healer classes. You had to balance between auto attacking and healing in a manner that let you stretch out your mana pool by increasing the amount of time between your next group heal spell by patching small amounts of hit points, while making sure that you keep your targets up (breaking off to heal). As anyone who's done high tier content can tell you, a 200-250 point group heal isn't much and isn't going to be able to keep your group up alone when you're frequently taking AOEs for thousands. This is why people who play this game said the arguments used in the original proc rate nerf made no sense.

You cannot replace the need to heal with tiny group heals that you can't control, and the idea that you have nowhere to go from there is ludicrous because there's various other stats such as haste which have only seen tiny increments, also a workable solution to "where do you go from here"-- just include the same proc with the same or slightly higher proc rate, or alternative procs, or whatever. It really doesn't require much imagination to see where you can go from there.

The healer haste and proc rate nerf made Crystalis with its very tiny 7.2% proc rate (down from 21%) became fairly useless when combined with the haste nerf, as the thing pretty much never went off enough to generate any real heals anymore. Cella's proc rate dropped from 26 down to 15.6, which when combined with the haste nerf pretty much cut its effectiveness in half. That is why those changes were such a big deal last year and why people who've played the game and used these items talked so much about the changes.

And now, as it stands, the 80 mana per proc (real spell itself costs 120 and is subject to mana cost reductions while the proc itself seems to not be, not that it would be enough reduction to matter even if it was) makes it not worth using these--at all. You cannot control when these procs go off. In fights where you need to be efficient with your mana while healing (read: almost all of them at the top end of the game) no one is going to use these anymore because wasting large amounts of mana on uncontrollable, tiny group heals is not worth the effort or the risk you take by meleeing on a healer, especially when the cost of these tiny heals amounts to only a fraction of the effectiveness of just casting a group heal for the same amount of spent mana.

Not to mention that this inventive game mechanic that added a new dimension to healer classes is effectively gone and healing has returned to stand there watching life bars.

 

[Tarutao]

Edited to add: (DISCLAIMER: This post was being written at the time of Zapple's post.)
Edited to add: (DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER: I have only glanced at Zapple's post at the time of writing these two disclaimers.)

This needs numbers. You know this item, how much healing it does when you proc, how often it procs for you, etc. than anyone.

If the argument is that the proc is a detriment, that argument needs to be made, and it needs to be made with numbers.

If the argument is that the proc is just not good enough but not actually a detriment to the item, then that should probably be stated so the nature of the situation is clear.

If the argument is that the mana drain change fundamentally removes the enjoyment of playing a healer, then a much broader discussion needs to be had, and it needs to be more involved than "change it back" or "someone other than me should rewrite the entire healing paradigm of SoD".

----

I'm certainly not against discussion, but I'm not seeing anyone start any actual discussion. You should totally start that discussion.

 

[Zapple]

Edited to add: (DISCLAIMER: This post was being written at the time of Zapple's post.)
Edited to add: (DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER: I have only glanced at Zapple's post at the time of writing these two disclaimers.)

This needs numbers. You know this item, how much healing it does when you proc, how often it procs for you, etc. than anyone.

If the argument is that the proc is a detriment, that argument needs to be made, and it needs to be made with numbers.

If the argument is that the proc is just not good enough but not actually a detriment to the item, then that should probably be stated so the nature of the situation is clear.

If the argument is that the mana drain change fundamentally removes the enjoyment of playing a healer, then a much broader discussion needs to be had, and it needs to be more involved than "change it back" or "someone other than me should rewrite the entire healing paradigm of SoD".

----

I'm certainly not against discussion, but I'm not seeing anyone start any actual discussion. You should totally start that discussion.

Well, here are some theoretical numbers that don't help very much because they assume you're auto-attacking 100% of the time and hitting, when in reality you can't control for how much time has to be used to stop attacking to to cast heals which varies based on a lot of factors including tank mitigation, as well as player movement which is common in many high end fights. So this is just a theoretical max output assuming you could stand next to a mob and hit it all of the time, never stopping to cast actual spells. Not very realistic since actual gameplay involves casting spells, moving around to avoid killing your raid or group or whatever the fight calls for. Since you have done most of the high end fights I think you'll agree with me here that using a model of "always attacking" to determine functional output is not very realistic, and because fights vary so much it is difficult to control for how much time you'd not be able to attack something.

You can determine how much output the weapon has when attacking and hitting 100% of the time in heals per second by doing the following...

(Weapon Delay (post haste effects * Average number of swings per proc) / 10 = Average time per proc.

Average heal output per proc, pre-crit rate * Heal crit rate = Average heal output per proc

Average heal output per proc / Average time per proc = Average heal output per second.

SO...

(pre-nerfs) Cella @ 28.6% proc rate (26% base + 10% increase from Melek Taus "Manual of Triggered Casting) with 180% haste (100% Yaulp 6 + 80% Piercing of the False Avatar) and let's even throw in Bard relic overhaste for shits and giggles (22%) for a 202% haste setup.

Procs "Radiance" which is an unresistable target AOE that hits for 150 base, reduces hate by 300 on every target it hits, procs Circle of Healing for every target it hits, and Crystallized Tears Detrimental on you for every target it hits. Most important thing here is it will proc Circle of Healing twice in most cases, when it procs.

Procs average once out of every 3.4965034965034965034965034965035 swings at a proc rate of 28.6, but let's just say 3.5 here. In most cases there will be two targets (you and the thing you're hitting), so 2 heals will proc on average. This is a 26 delay weapon. If my math is correct in how haste stacking works, the delay is reduced from 26 to about 8.6 (26 / 3.02 = 8.6092715231788079470198675496689). Could be wrong here because this is some real arcane shit in how a lot of things stack with not a lot of actual documentation as far as I know.

Heals let's say 250 on a maxed out cleric with 20% spec bonus, with +25 overcap alteration skill and the archaic spell buff on themselves. Pre-crit, of course.

So an 8.6 delay weapon (with max haste stack) that procs every 3.5 swings would proc an average of once every 3.01 (8.6 * 3.5 / 10 = 3.01) seconds if you're attacking full time, producing two heals that will go off for 250 a piece, non-crit... but of course every healer who has one of these weapons will have a heal crit value. Let's say the heal crit % of someone using this is 40% for the sake of argument, just for those numbers. Everyone loves numbers.

500 * 1.40 = 700 average healing output from a proc. 700 / 3.15 = 232.56 (232.55813953488372093023255813953) heals per second, theoretically. This is of course assuming you melee one hundred percent of the time, which as anyone who has played a healer with these weapons on content at, near, or above the tier you get this item will tell you is simply never going to happen. This was with the original values before the Sept 2012 nerfs, once again, and on a completely maxed out cleric in terms of spec bonus, alteration mod, has archaic, and so on.

(pre-nerfs) Crystalis @ 23.1% proc rate (21% base + 10% from Manual of Triggered Casting) with 180% haste and 22% bard overhaste. Again this is with the pre-nerf Piercing 80% haste item making up 180% haste from Yaulp 6 + the haste item at 80%.

Crystalis only procs a single heal per proc. A single target nuke (135 damage) with 0 sec stun and procs Circle of Healing and Crystallized Tears Detrimental. It heals the exact same amount of hp as the Cella proc does but only procs a single heal spell.

24 delay weapon with 202% haste is 7.95 delay (24 / 3.02 = 7.9470198675496688741721854304636).

This weapon with its old rate procced an average of once out 4.3 swings (4.3290043290043290043290043290043), producing a ~250 non-crit heal on a maxed out cleric. One proc every ((7.95 * 4.3) / 10 = 3.4185) 3.41 seconds.

So again the heal output... 250 * 1.4 = 350. 350 / 3.41 = 102.6 (102.6392961876832844574780058651) healed per second. AGAIN, this is theoretically--if you're attacking 100% of the time which as we've already determined is impossible.

Now for the post-nerf numbers.

Cella @ 17.16% proc rate (15.6% base + 10% increase from Melek Taus "Manual of Triggered Casting) with 172% haste (100% Yaulp 6 + 50% Piercing of the False Avatar OR Confine of the Rushing Stream OR Belahfri and 22% Bard overhaste)

I've already explained how the weapon works, so let's get to the numbers.

Cella currently procs an average of every ~5.83 (5.8275058275058275058275058275058) swings. With max haste on a cleric, it now has a delay of ~9.56 (26 / 2.72 = 9.5588235294117647058823529411765). It will now proc an average of every 5.57 seconds if swinging full time -- (9.56 * 5.83) / 10. Still procs the same amount of healing per proc.

500 * 1.4 = 700. 700 / 5.57 = 125.67 (125.67324955116696588868940754039) healing per second, theoretically...

Crystalis @ 7.92% proc rate (7.2 * 1.1), with 172% haste (100% Yaulp 6 + 50% Piercing of the False Avatar OR Confine of the Rushing Stream OR Belahfri and 22% Bard overhaste)

Once again the weapon's already been explained so we know how it works.

With 172% haste, Crystalis has a delay of 24 reduced to 8.82 (24 / 2.72 = (8.8235294117647058823529411764706). Procs on average of every 12.6 swings (12.626262626262626262626262626263) swings. With its current proc rate and max best swing speed, will proc an average of once every 11.11 seconds (11.1132) if swinging full time -- (8.82 * 12.6) / 10.

250 * 1.4 = 350. 350 / 11.11 = 31.5 (31.50315031503150315031503150315) heals per second. Again, theoretically if attacking full time.

Pretty big difference pre- and post- proc and haste nerfs, yes? Ouch. Now this is pretty rough math and if someone wants to correct it with exact numbers can go ahead but this is just to give an idea of how much power these items actually had/have.

The procs even pre-procrate/haste nerfs did not heal enough to remove the need to group heal. They, like I said in my first post in this thread, were used to help pad out your mana pool to make you able to heal for longer with real healing spells by staggering out the amount of time until next group heal spell. When you're taking 4000+ damage every 4-8 seconds which is not uncommon during phases in many high end raid fights, there is no way the amount of heals these provide can keep up. Even if you're meleeing 100% of the time with the best possible setup available, you will not be able to cover the amount of heals required.



The arguments I'm making here are that:

The current proc rate's output on these weapons isn't really that great, and wasn't even before the nerfs. The justification given for the nerfs did not make sense to people who owned and used these items.

-AND-

The amount of mana drained per proc currently makes these items unusable as proc weapons due to the random, uncontrollable nature of procs. It's a detriment to the item and basically makes the proc a flavor text kind of deal because no one is going to use mana or effort or risking meleeing while not keeping a trigger finger on real heal spells for uncontrollable procs that are actually less efficient than just casting heal spells. There shouldn't be a sizable mana drain component on something like this because it is uncontrollable and a weapon proc at that.

(tangent) They've become stat sticks and not very good ones at that since similar or even below tier options provide as much or close to as much in stats--this is not actually a problem of the lower tier items being overpowered because if you nerfed the lower tier items that say, Cella+a secondary of similar tier are close to, you could then directly say that the nerfed item is now equivalent to things at even lower tiers... This is likely a problem that has to do with many T12-13+ items getting stealth nerfed in the last year to year and a half and bleeding stats. I don't know why this was felt necessary but it seemed that the stat progression was already very similar to tiers leading up to it.

-AND-

The nerfs to these items makes playing a healer (at the high end especially) a lot less engaging and more boring/frustrating and may cause need need to have a lot of high end content retuned to be less gear-check and require less dps, have less hit points and so on. Those of us who played with these items know full well that they weren't overpowered to the point where the hyperbole used to justify the original proc rate nerfs ("replaced the need to group heal") was anywhere near true.

If you want to go that way fine but then all of these cool ideas which actually worked are down the toilet, and like I said healing is back to watch life bar and upgrades are again back to real 'exciting' 20 mana upgrades rather than cool effects that can alter how you play the game to make it more engaging, such as the healer proc weapons did. A net loss for the game, really.

 

[Zapple]

BTW this item remains unchanged and does not drain mana (as do many others with heal procs, I'm sure)

http://wiki.shardsofdalaya.com/index.php/Spire_of_Sympathy

(another item with same proc - http://wiki.shardsofdalaya.com/index.php/Blackmetal_Robe)

I'll crunch the numbers for Spire of Sympathy right here:

Spire of Sympathy (pre-haste nerfs) - 202% max haste. 9.9% proc rate (9% base proc rate * 1.1 from tome)

Proc does a 1421 point group heal in-game with Nublia's current gear, tomes and all of that. (base: 600 on Superior Circle of Healing)

Delay is 45. 14.9 with 202% haste. (45 / 3.02). Procs an average of

Procs an average of every 10.10 swings. (100 / 9.9 = 10.10101010101010101010101010101).

Procs an average of once every 15 seconds ((10.10 * 14.9) / 10 = 15.049

SO...

Heals an average of 1421 * 1.4 = 1989 (1989.4) per proc. 1989 / 15 = 132 (132.6) is the average amount of heal per sec. Better than pre-nerf Crystalis output. So why did people prefer Crystalis? More consistent output of smaller heals due to higher proc rate for patching small amounts of HP to pad out your mana, which is what these weapons were used for, as I said.

Spire of Sympathy (post-haste nerf) - 172% max haste, 9.9% proc rate (9 * 1.1)

Proc does a 1421 point group heal in-game with Nublia's current gear, tomes and all of that. (base: 600 on Superior Circle of Healing)

Delay is 45. 16.5 (16.544117647058823529411764705882) with 172% haste. (45 / 2.72).

Procs an average of every 10.10 swings. (100 / 9.9 = 10.10101010101010101010101010101).

Procs an average of once every 16.6 seconds ((10.10 * 16.5) / 10 = 16.665

SO...

Heals an average of 1421 * 1.4 = 1989 (1989.4) per proc. 1989 / 16.6 = 120 (119.81927710843373493975903614458) is the average amount of heal per sec.

 

[sheer1]

This isn't about the cella change specifically, but it continues to baffle me that patch notes omit the most important pieces of information. Woldaff you are right that not every little change needs to be addressed in patch notes, but there is no reason to not include any item change ever. The loot hunt is a big part of all mmorpgs, and forcing people to find out on their own that their items have significantly changed in power is the absolute wrong thing to do. This is regardless of whether the item change was warranted or not.

It's fun to get items, it's less fun to see them get nerfed, but it is completely aggravating to find out mid fight that your items are suddenly not acting the same as usual and you have to go into a spell parser/the wiki to figure out what happened.

 

[Vitali]

I was sad to see Hammer of the Depths duration cut from 18min to 12 seconds (roughly)

 

[jew_nose_it]

I don't really understand why this nerf went in. Heal pro weapons were a lot of fun and made playing priests a lot more interesting. While some might say that priest classes were becoming overepowered via these weapons I say that's just not true. Every class starting at T11 starts to become incredibly strong, especially when farming old world content. I mean I could duo citadel with Jraul (when he was only T11-12)/Driizz if I was careful and only pulled singles or doubles. Does that mean that Jraul was too strong a tank? I'm sure that Kedrin could tank a lot of hard content, does that mean rangers are too strong?

 

[Tarutao]

Whoa, numbers. I'll give 'em a look.

 

[Zapple]

I was sad to see Hammer of the Depths duration cut from 18min to 12 seconds (roughly)

I logged in and saw that this is a thing and my jaw dropped.

 

[Waldoff]

1) The "Healers were more fun" argument is not legitimate. If healers were unfun before - irreplaceable weapons are not the way to make them more fun. I am sure the 98% of healers prior to T12 would really love to have fun too. If this is your argument, you are not helping your case with cella et al.

2) You are talking about on tier content. I could give a shit less that they were not great on on tier content. Being overpowered on exp and lower tiered content is still being overpowered. At the end of the day, if you can go into overgrowth and exp on mobs solely by meleeing, mana free, and with more DPS (which was observed often), then these items are a huge jump in power from what you had available before.

3) The argument that "After tier 11 people get much more powerful so why not let us be powerful too" is a ludicrous argument entirely. That is the entire problem that we are working hard to fix. The power increase from Tier 11 to 13 is likely more than the power increase from Tier 1 to 10. That is not sustainable, and ends up making tons of content (and dev man hours) completely obsolete. This game is not just the high tiers, and added "fun" or "cool" clickies to the high end that fuck up the low end is not something we are going to keep in the game.

4) The spire is something we may have to look at, although at first glance it seems much less an issue as compared to where the two healer 1hnders were at. Comparing it to the robe is either misguided or disingenuous. I am not sure what parallels you wanted me to draw from that.

5) The argument that these weapons let clerics pad their mana also misses the mark. If you can pad your mana with a clicky, you have to count that mana as part of the base stats of the weapon. If these were so good that you could appreciably last longer healing on fights then that just goes to show the power of the item. Even worse, given that cleric mana and longevity has completely outpaced the length of even on tier content, we have no desire to keep adding things that let healers heal forever. And if the newest of highest end fights have been designed around such a huge increase in high end healer longevity, then they obviously will need to be adjusted. But as you said - the items hit so far do little to nothing in the highest end.

6) I do not care if you think I respect the playerbase Eisley. If you want to construe my lack of respect for you as a lack of respect for the playerbase, then as misguided as I think that is - it is your prerogative. What I will not stand for anymore is half concealed prods at the staff, or shitty attitude in comment threads. You and the ten or whatever high end people who want to speak up about how the staff are so mindless and make all these arbitrary changes are just not going to on these forums anymore. If you want to make posts with numbers, suggestions, and a nice tone then fine. Otherwise you will find yourself off of these forums completely, and possibly the game, completely. We work hard to make this game and we are so fucking sick of having to deal with people purposefully trying to shit up our day with attitude or tinfoiling bullshit. Which is why I am going to start using the wiz method of forum modding. So. keep it to yourself.

There are plenty of games that are fine with old content being obsolesced every time new content comes out. That lets them put tons of fun and powerful stuff on every new tier without having to worry about keeping all the previous tiers balanced. We are not those games.

 

[Tarutao]

Well, I actually do like those numbers I see. They seem to very well demonstrate that the overall healing output of the item has been lowered by quite a bit due to changes to the proc rate of the items as well as changes to the haste values of other items.

These numbers, however, feel like the supporting structure of an argument regarding the item's healing power and not the mana drain component of the item. To that end, I think we've created now three concerns about the item, and we need to be clear about which is being addressed by which arguments.

(1) The mana drain component -- this is still a discussion that has yet to be started in earnest.

(2) The healing efficacy of the procs of these items on Tier 12+ fights -- this will vary from fight to fight, and for some fights (hi primes twins phase 2), the actual benefit of the healing of this proc might be zero by encounter design. For some fights, if it's a minor benefit, then that matches the power growth curve from tier to tier.

(3) The healing efficacy of the procs of these items on expgrind content -- this is a concern that is expressed in the last sentence of item 2 of wold's previous post, and I'd suspect that it was a large impetus for some of the changes. The disconnect in the discussion of this third concern seems to be in how much healing was being done pre-nerf as a measure of how much actual casting of heals needs to be done in those expgrind groups. There was years ago a backlash of "my class is just turn auto-attack on" complaints, and to let that be how someone heals sufficiently seems like a step backwards.

 

[Zapple]

2) You are talking about on tier content. I could give a shit less that they were not great on on tier content. Being overpowered on exp and lower tiered content is still being overpowered. At the end of the day, if you can go into overgrowth and exp on mobs solely by meleeing, mana free, and with more DPS (which was observed often), then these items are a huge jump in power from what you had available before.

3) The argument that "After tier 11 people get much more powerful so why not let us be powerful too" is a ludicrous argument entirely. That is the entire problem that we are working hard to fix. The power increase from Tier 11 to 13 is likely more than the power increase from Tier 1 to 10. That is not sustainable, and ends up making tons of content (and dev man hours) completely obsolete. This game is not just the high tiers, and added "fun" or "cool" clickies to the high end that fuck up the low end is not something we are going to keep in the game.

It's already there even without these items. It's called "being higher tier." I can't believe this entire post but really this is the worst part of it. The worst thing about it. Yes. You are overpowered on lower tiered content no matter what by virtue of outgearing it significantly. That is how this game has always worked.

What are you going to really do about it? Much higher numbers alone mean you will have a much easier time than even with these items due to increase in how long you can effectively heal, how well your tanks mitigate, how much DPS the players do and how much mana and hit points they even have. That is why there are some people who complain about "ringers" because that is how this game works with or without these items you are not really making good arguments about. I find it hard to believe you did not notice this when you played this game because your characters are fairly high tier. Surely you went back and backgeared while stomping some content in your higher tier gear when you played this game? Same thing.

The power increase from tier 11-13 is probably in fact less than 1 to 10 unless you're talking about perfect tome setups which almost no one has because they don't drop often enough. You go from damage type specific focus effects being 2-4-6... (2% increase) to 7, a 1% increase. You go from focus effect upgrades every 1-2 tiers where focus 7s had already been available for tiers and tiers to... using focus 8s and the only focus 9 I believe that exists is a mana conservation. Mobs often drop 1 loot instead of 2 which further slows down the rate of increase. The time investment to character power increase is way smaller even outside of the abstract of the tiers and what kind of actual character power increase that exists and how quickly you actually gain character power in them.

If you want to make the game play exactly the same from tier 1-infinity and make super interesting fights where there's no real evolution of how you play this game and every upgrade is just some 20-30 mana thing where the fights consist of easy planes of power-era EQ gimmick and mobs having skyhigh resists so that most of your dps does next to nothing to it I mean that's cool but it's not very interesting or anything and wasn't the pretty good direction the game had been heading after the fairly uncomplex raiding slog up through about tier 8-9 or so with a few notable exceptions. Marza and Zaela honestly made some really cool shit that a player who's coming from lower end content wouldn't have thought would even be possible in an EQ emulator, and some of that includes cool items that just sort of worked with much harder content. It's one of the things that make this game more interesting than just playing any other game.

If it seems like I mad, it's because I am a little after spending around 40 minutes making an Effort Math Post showing why the common arguments for nerfing these make little sense and how you'd probably have to nerf the shit out of a ton of fights so that a retarded monkey can win them to make healer mana last long enough to win them, especially ones that have just recently been won where it's come down to the wire with everything blown including day long cleric AAs, these weapons in their post-first-nerf form used and all shoes thrown at the mob in terms of clickables and everything with the strat's fully understood and to be honest the best group of internet nerds to currently play the game being behind the wheel of the characters making their little mans do things.

This is me. Venting. Making a real post. Real posts, about real frustrating changes for people who play this game. You can take it as some kind of "personal attack" and ban me but really. WTF mate. dub tee eff. Like you actually got me to care enough to make posts this long. Holy shit. Is this an elaborate troll or whats the deal.

 

[Obscenitor]

There are plenty of games that are fine with old content being obsolesced every time new content comes out. That lets them put tons of fun and powerful stuff on every new tier without having to worry about keeping all the previous tiers balanced. We are not those games.

This is a pretty discouraging post. If you are going to change everything to fit within your universally linear progression model then I hope that you reconsider the difficulty of all high tier content. The effort and time it took to progress at the high end when anyone on staff played this game PALES in comparison to today's high end.

 

[articbre]

I would like to try to place in this a constructive manner, not to say I entirely disagree, but there are statements I feel were not entirely portrayed very well.

1) The "Healers were more fun" argument is not legitimate. If healers were unfun before - irreplaceable weapons are not the way to make them more fun. I am sure the 98% of healers prior to T12 would really love to have fun too. If this is your argument, you are not helping your case with cella et al.

While this statement is kinda true, I do feel that even by base design that clerics have always had this in mind of being able to use/substitute weapons to provide better a)dps b) utility c)funness
After all, there is the proc hammers that clerics can summon, these weapons are by no means irreplaceable but tweaks obviously do need to be made. The biggest thing I hear is of mana draining on these weapons. I personally could see the healing may have been hit too hard, but that is my personal point of view. I feel using people prior to T12 not having fun if a poor explanation due to lack of weapons that provide utility/funzies, is more of a we should look at weapons along the teir line and add. Not remove, as obviously this has become a desired effect, even if it isn't a healing proc.

2) You are talking about on tier content. I could give a shit less that they were not great on on tier content. Being overpowered on exp and lower tiered content is still being overpowered. At the end of the day, if you can go into overgrowth and exp on mobs solely by meleeing, mana free, and with more DPS (which was observed often), then these items are a huge jump in power from what you had available before.

Regardless of how hard anyone tries to fight it, you will become overpowered as you progress though the tiers. If I were to take my character to overgrowth, I can stomp some things, where a plain 65 will have much difficulty. Same as, if a level 40 returns back to BB, he will destroy it. It's part of progression. Limiting it, is a tricky part, but this is also the reason for additional zones for xp, with new challenges for the highenders with rewards befitting of the additional difficulty but also allowing these areas to have the opportunity for lower end characters to gain an advantage and progress. Something I find missing for lower end toons, which has been improved greatly by 6 mans and such. The chance to progress, without needing to be in a jerkhat top end guild with 100% dedicated times etc. eg hatfields vs mccoy theories.

3) The argument that "After tier 11 people get much more powerful so why not let us be powerful too" is a ludicrous argument entirely. That is the entire problem that we are working hard to fix. The power increase from Tier 11 to 13 is likely more than the power increase from Tier 1 to 10. That is not sustainable, and ends up making tons of content (and dev man hours) completely obsolete. This game is not just the high tiers, and added "fun" or "cool" clickies to the high end that fuck up the low end is not something we are going to keep in the game.

While I do not fully agree with the initial statement here, I do agree with the rest. I do believe that we need these "fun" or "cool" ideas brought forth though the tiers, and levels. Allow everyone to enjoy on what ended up becoming great and fun ideas. If these things succeed, expand on it, lets not limit our enjoyability to just a 2% population.

5) The argument that these weapons let clerics pad their mana also misses the mark. If you can pad your mana with a clicky, you have to count that mana as part of the base stats of the weapon. If these were so good that you could appreciably last longer healing on fights then that just goes to show the power of the item. Even worse, given that cleric mana and longevity has completely outpaced the length of even on tier content, we have no desire to keep adding things that let healers heal forever. And if the newest of highest end fights have been designed around such a huge increase in high end healer longevity, then they obviously will need to be adjusted. But as you said - the items hit so far do little to nothing in the highest end.

I agree, that if these weapons are looked at as so powerful, let the stats/ratio/etc reflect that. I have not seen any high end content that has been outplaced due to these weapons, but I do, even with these added effects see healers going OOM on fights. So perhaps both ends of these do need to be looked at.

As for the rest, I do agree with the statements. Trying to make points without being a tinfoiling asshat/jerkface/DEVS/GMS ARE MAKING THE SKY FALL is not a method that should be accepted. If you want a respectful, and earnest answer in threads make constructive criticism not outright(or subtle) slander against people(or their content) that spend their free time to make/manage fun things for you. I hope this is taken as constructive, and not being an asshole that needs to be banned. Thank you for reading my wall of text.

 

[Waldoff]

It's already there even without these items. It's called "being higher tier." I can't believe this entire post but really this is the worst part of it. The worst thing about it. Yes. You are overpowered on lower tiered content no matter what by virtue of outgearing it significantly. That is how this game has always worked.

I thought it was pretty clear I was making an argument about magnitude. Of course better gear should make earlier things easier. But obtaining item X specifically should not make everything easier in a way that far surpasses items Y through Z.

What are you going to really do about it? Much higher numbers alone mean you will have a much easier time than even with these items due to increase in how long you can effectively heal, how well your tanks mitigate, how much DPS the players do and how much mana and hit points they even have.

We are going to make sure that item increases in the end tiers are sustainable to add in new tiers. This is not the first time this happened. It happened with Inner Prison and old Thaz to name two. The difference is we have another tier of content added on top without the old being balanced. That multiplied the whole problem.

That is why there are some people who complain about "ringers" because that is how this game works with or without these items you are not really making good arguments about. I find it hard to believe you did not notice this when you played this game because your characters are fairly high tier. Surely you went back and backgeared while stomping some content in your higher tier gear when you played this game? Same thing.

Again, the problem is one of magnitude. You are also ignoring the fact of this item being extremely useful both on tier for exp and somewhat useful in some limited raid fights. But lets assume that these items are only great on older content. Ringers should be helpful to previous content in relation to the gear they have. Letting one specific item be a huge boon to early content, to the point of nearly negating damage problems, is not balanced. You are also assuming that the only people getting these items are high tier characters. You are surely aware of people bringing alts or lower tier friends to fights. That is why items have to be balanced around old and new content.

The power increase from tier 11-13 is probably in fact less than 1 to 10 unless you're talking about perfect tome setups which almost no one has because they don't drop often enough. You go from damage type specific focus effects being 2-4-6... (2% increase) to 7, a 1% increase. You go from focus effect upgrades every 1-2 tiers where focus 7s had already been available for tiers and tiers to... using focus 8s and the only focus 9 I believe that exists is a mana conservation. Mobs often drop 1 loot instead of 2 which further slows down the rate of increase. The time investment to character power increase is way smaller even outside of the abstract of the tiers and what kind of actual character power increase that exists and how quickly you actually gain character power in them.

You are cherry picking. Focus effects are pretty damned balanced throughout the tiers. You can not point to them as some sort of overarching example. Also, at the end of the day gear check has to be the determinative factor for loot quality. Gear check sets the envelope where the gear can be, and difficulty and time sink determine where in that envelope it can go. Otherwise you obsolesce old content. In many of the problems, the increase in power comes from something not linearly dispersed through the game. Instead, the power increase in the problem tiers come in ways that are extraneous from the normal progression, without taking into account what that extraneous power does to the item. If you want to give an item something special, you have to take that into consideration when you make the other stats of the item. This has largely not been the case at the high end. [/QUOTE]

If you want to make the game play exactly the same from tier 1-infinity and make super interesting fights where there's no real evolution of how you play this game and every upgrade is just some 20-30 mana thing where the fights consist of easy planes of power-era EQ gimmick and mobs having skyhigh resists so that most of your dps does next to nothing to it I mean that's cool but it's not very interesting or anything and wasn't the pretty good direction the game had been heading after the fairly uncomplex raiding slog up through about tier 8-9 or so with a few notable exceptions. Marza and Zaela honestly made some really cool shit that a player who's coming from lower end content wouldn't have thought would even be possible in an EQ emulator, and some of that includes cool items that just sort of worked with much harder content. It's one of the things that make this game more interesting than just playing any other game.

If you do not like doing cool new things without them being balanced around all the other things, I am not sure what to tell you. No one is saying we can not have new and cool things - we are saying you do not get them suddenly in one or two items that change the entire scheme of raiding and itemization from then on. If healers are boring, make a post on incorporating the cella scheme into healers as a whole. The solution to "healers are boring" is not adding an item in late tiers.

If it seems like I mad, it's because I am a little after spending around 40 minutes making an Effort Math Post showing why the common arguments for nerfing these make little sense and how you'd probably have to nerf the shit out of a ton of fights so that a retarded monkey can win them to make healer mana last long enough to win them, especially ones that have just recently been won where it's come down to the wire with everything blown including day long cleric AAs, these weapons in their post-first-nerf form used and all shoes thrown at the mob in terms of clickables and everything with the strat's fully understood and to be honest the best group of internet nerds to currently play the game being behind the wheel of the characters making their little mans do things.

You are welcome to be mad. I am not threatening people for being mad. Your post was generally respectful, and I appreciate that. You are allowed to disagree with me. I want people to express their disagreement. I just do not want people to be crazy and tinfoily about it. I enjoy debate - but things phrased in snide ways to make my day, or other devs days, worse are hurtful to us and the server as a whole. And I want this to go both ways - civility on our side and the player side.

Tarutao is right - arguments about the specific numbers of the change might be legitimate, and are welcome. But given the increase at the highest end of the game, and our desire to add more content, we are going to continue to look at items that multiply power too much to continue with. I know this will cause a lot of unhappiness, and I apologize that I did not oversee things enough to stop it from happening, but they still need to happen.

 

[Waldoff]

This is a pretty discouraging post. If you are going to change everything to fit within your universally linear progression model then I hope that you reconsider the difficulty of all high tier content. The effort and time it took to progress at the high end when anyone on staff played this game PALES in comparison to today's high end.

Difficulty is important, and a range of difficulty per tier is important, and can be an indicator of loot goodness. Unfortunately, at the end of the day the true indicator has to be gear requirements on the fights. If you just do pure difficulty, and end up with tiers that are much, MUCH more difficult then the tiers before it, you obsolesce old content and end up with a nice big fuck you barrier of entry for guilds that have been utilizing hard work, time and effort to progress.

That has been a problem with the latest tiers, as they have been balanced around difficulty and extremely extremely difficult. This is great for guilds who can swing them, but not so great for guilds who can not or do not want to. To fix this we are fleshing out the tiers with content that drops lesser quality loot that is still an upgrade, and are making sure outlier items are balanced around the itemization of the tier as a whole. We are hoping that these two things, along with balancing of the gear checks of individual fights, will let us take the slope down a bit on the power curve at the latest tiers.


Edit: Also nearly every item change has been done in vent with 4-5 people, plus asking the opinions of others. Pointing to one or two staff members who have not played player characters at tier X Y or Z is a strawman at best, and incorrect at worst. Everything people talk about, including the whole "Difficulty went way up! So gear has to too!" only affirm my understanding. I appreciate that you want to be able to point out that my information is somehow flawed, but I am not doing this arbitrarily. You can argue about numbers, or about the ideas themselves, but claiming that nearly the entire dev team just does not understand your plight seems a bit frivolous to me.

 

[Anti Eh]

One could assume that the fights gets balanced at the same time as item nerfs?
Would make sence they go hand in hand, but my fear is that content like VZ and Jenrok didnt get numbers reduced in their script at the same time as the items that dropped previous to that encounter were reduced.

I am curious if Prime Warden Jenrok script has been updated to reflect the teir9 loot he drops atm,
and / or if the balancing of this fight will be made public before anyone else wastes their time clearing to and trying it.

Cause my gear and cleric healing abilities were not able to keep up then,
It would be a great waste of players time to wait to adjust content after 12 wipes of dieing to 30% cause ur oom from a flawless script when many many threads have already made it aware that healers are going oom to these high teir encounters with item stats from b4 March 1st.

My numbers to contribute are while scrolling melee in overgrowth like woldoaff said is overpowered.
Crystallis = 180dps average, Spires2hand = 120dps, Laraek = 100dps.
all parses done with damage 7 and single pulls of mushrooms i could find while Fuwok basiclly solo pulled 20 mob pulls to powerlvler his rogue.

Clerics should be gods and its weird to think how they used to be able to parse 600dps and now 150dps is in need of nerfing still.

 

[Silosobi]

I think people are missing a huge part of the picture here. The power jump from T11 to T13 is not because Marza or someone made OP gear. I honestly bet the gear jump from T9 to t11 is greater than t11 to t13 (if you want to debate this i will detail it with numbers).

The power jump comes from tomes. My character gains ~ 25% additional dps from tomes, not even consider emberflow tomes, which are probably the biggest benefit/powerup in the game for the time required. So, 25% dps, lots of mitigation, resists, hp, mana regen, etc. Now, when I look at my gear gain from T11 to T13, I gained about 300 mana and 8% spell damage.

The reason everyone is upset here is that the loot just doesn't reflect fight difficulty anymore. (and 90% of it never was crazy OP to where it needed nerfs, it was pretty consist or even less incremental than previous tiers).

On top of all this, here are some chances that I have hard time not thinking are trolls:

This healer weapon thing. If you hate healers using a weapon to heal, just make it a nuke or something in line with all the previous healer weapons. Dont just increase the mana drain by a factor of 16 so that anyone meeleing will get yelled at for being dumb. Some priests want to meele for some extra oomph. I wager people would be happy with just steady upgrades to the cleric hammer damage wise.

Plume of Rebirth - got changed to 30%rez. There are countless other 50% rez clickies in game. What?

Taesh Ear - So a t7 clicky had a 4k nuke which was okay, but upgrading it at T13 to a 5k nuke on the same cooldown was too much? Do you realize mobs have gone up in hp by a factor of ~10 in that time?

I'm really not trying to bitch and moan. Im trying to put out specific numbers/examples of why things seem to not make sense right now.

 

[Vitali]

I wager people would be happy with just steady upgrades to the cleric hammer damage wise.

This really caught my attention. I was really happy with the first incarnation of Crystalis because it was the first weapon in game that a priest could wear that had a proc rate near or better then a spell I got several years ago. Not even a Relic, just an Ancient. Having a summoned hammer be the best DPS item I can ever get is silly, considering you get it so early on in your SoD adventures.

I would be extremely happy to see something along the lines of DPS item upgrades, even if it was a slight bump in proc rate and the same proc as summoned hammers. Just so I could wear something with on tier stats and not have to summon it each time I play.