Meteor shower cool down is game breaking for that tree

Here's the raw data I submitted to Chris along with a few copy and pastes from people who hit the nail right on the head. It was collected here, on stream and on 2 other posts.

Keep in mind, there were some surprises amongst the items but between this report and other people sending in info, Chris has got some more things to ponder. Keep in mind, there is no guarantee there WILL be changes, but he already happened to be addressing at least one of the items below when we talked this over. I'm sure he'll have more to come on this during his upcoming streams about combat balance.

(these are NOT in any sort of weighted order)

- balance changes are reasonable to some
- altered combat style/deck, known high end fire mage has adjusted well to changes with minimal concern
- challenged to learn new techniques to accommodate changes, adjusted well to changes
- chose not adjust to changes, retained current style and simply utilize ROF and MS less due to durations.
- do not like making changes to their playstyle at all, especially if prompted by nerfs.
- reagent usage has surged due to high% reagent consumption per cast (2x Black Pearl, 2x Mandrake, 1x Spider Silk, 1x Sulfurous Ash) and more frequent recasts
- reduced duration results in skill spam reducing available time to cast other skills, encourages casting less aoe's, not fully stacking, or not utilizing skill at all.
- challenging to maintain 5/6 stacks of each while having time to cast other skills (more with locked styles and unpracticed dynamic styles)
- want return of long durations or duration hits not to be as large
- do not like dynamic system, only want to use locked, changes seem to greatly affect AOE skills on locked bar and have little effect vs experienced dynamic users
- changes have not affected focus pools as intended for this nerf
- changes HAVE affected their focus pools as intended for this nerf
- wish to untrain affected skills or trees and desire 100% XP return for these items
- anything but 5 or 6 stack does negligible/pointless damage
- ROF and MS now useless
- wish more testing occurred before going live
- wish changes could be incremental and smaller to allow for gradual study
- changes to benefit PvP should not inadvertently hurt PvE
- (new feature) separate pvp and pve balancing efforts (implies skills take on different behaviors depending on target)
- (new feature) want respec XP returns to instantly apply to newly selected skill to save time for respec'ing/time lost
- (new feature) applicable duration type AOE's are "maintained" (channeled, allow for other actions while channeling) and drain focus at a X rate while active, cast once, focus drains until canceled
- (new feature) want multiple versions of same skill (test versions) on QA and each tested/compared side by side original
- shorten DOT length of ROF, not duration length
- dislike ratio of time to cast 6 stack, AOE duration does not increase significantly enough to make 6 stack worth building
- allow ROF dot stacking to encourage group play
- high level fire mage indications no change to dps, keeps 100% focus bar still, ROF has only a 2-3s downtime before new 6 stack up (through use of dynamic slotted ROF and Mind Lock techniques)

These are all great discussion points -- thank you guys!​

 

I love this.... this is the type of conversations we need in lots of areas...

congratz @Elgarion you have been promoted!!

 

Do I get a bigger desk? Or an improved stapler model?

 

SHHHHHHHhhhh.. or he will nerf AOE spells again...

 

I just wanted to add that with fire spec and using ring of fire locked there is no downtime. It can be recast by charging to 6 and the mobs are still being damaged by the dot. I had no issues keeping this going indefinitely without using a dynamic deck. The only thing this change did for my playstyle is make me cast it twice as much and it costs about 4 times more due to that and the reagent increase. The players that are really effected by these changes are low - mid level without specialization and high end gear.

 

noted! thanks Adam

 

agreed, non spec or low to mid level spec people feel this the most 5-10 seconds less cool down or more duration I think solves most of this.

5 for fire
10 for moon

 

Sounds like he going to nerf it...

 

Moon is getting multiple new damage skills.

So now, MS is not powerful enough to want to keep it up 100% of the time during fights anymore... but it may be powerful enough that it's worth occasionally casting in targeted spots at the correct moment if there are a large number of targets together?

Is RoF still powerful enough that people are keeping it up 100% of the time? Is that the comparison by which MS is too weak?

 

That might work out alright. Hopefully it will make up for the lack of duration with meteor shower. I used to cast it often. Not as much anymore. Now i'm on to using poison (nerf in 3...2...1... ).

Hopefully new Moon damage skills will help balance that out a bit.

 

moon is a weird one unless ur in full moon gear u are not going to do much damage to high tier mobs so it’s one skill full gear and spec to really make it work, with fire you have other things to do while it’s ticking fireball flame arrow immolation and fire punch thing so all those skills are benifit from attunement and gear. Just looking at damage type vrs damage type a full fire mage can do 6x the damage of moon and more vrs other schools. I’d even say immolation can beat meteor storm in close in situations with like gear.

your right moon needs more skills but since it’s less dps then fire it should have a better duration currently with the way cool downs are moon with non spec does not cool down as good as fire non spec.

 

That's how I thought MS should work. It's not supposed to keep pace with RoF in the first place if RoF is being spammed.

Besides Fire is not the magical tree Lunar is opposed to - it's Sun. So it's Sun that Lunar is supposed to match.

 

I still use it as is... I never relied on my AOE's as my primary dps which is why I don't think it affects all the same. I'm not spec moon but spec sun so mine does even less dmg. I do think as the game was designed that those that spec should have advantage over non spec that is the trade off for better.

 

Looks like this change also affects elite skeleton mages as well. Noticed they were using RoF which lasted about 15 seconds (more or less). Guess it affected everybody.