A pure bolter with no Earth Lore, but stone skin has occasionally saved my bacon...

Just an elf about town...

Yes, but Stone Skin is just thrown into ;waggle for grins. Its 15 sec worth of on-node mana per cast so... might as well throw it up

Just an elf about town...

I think 502 is the appropriate spot for stoneskin. Or 501 and move sleep up one.

>Leave 519 as is unless we have a 240 style CS booster spell coming. All of the other pures have access to multiple AS boosters, while there is only one minor CS boost available to wizards, so this seems fair. Sorcerers have 720 as their instant kill spell, so they are fine.

I agreed with most of your post fleurs, but this is a little convoluted. 720 does not supplant 240. 720 can instakill something you could instaskill some other way because it is so highly dependent on level. 240 lets you kill things significantly older than you.

I like sleep! I use it on stuff I can reasonably ward. Offensive and laying down makes for yummy odds for the claid follow-up.

Now the air-lore sleep tie-in, that's another story... :/

I don't worry about herb eating so much. The combination of haste and GoS sigil of mending means I can eat herbs like a boss.

Now that tg01 is getting 919 nerfed, I'm kinda scared to open my mouth about anything positive about my character >.<
(joking. Kinda)

In all seriousness I think stone skin is best as a level 1 spell. It would be probably be most helpful for little'uns hunting rats where hp damage is the most dangerous.

In all seriousness I think stone skin is best as a level 1 spell. It would be probably be most helpful for little'uns hunting rats where hp damage is the most dangerous.

This demonstrates just how polar development and actual end user perceptions are. While I don't necessarily agree it should be level 1, I agree your position is closer to being more accurate then the current iteration and placement of 520.

>How about actually making our class defining, awe-inspiring, earth obliterating spell actually useful instead of cannibalizing the spot? There is simply no reason with all the focused type spells why 525 can not be focused and usable.

Fine. Move Meteor Swarm to 540 and when it finally comes around to being made usable it can kick even more booty.

Fine. Move Meteor Swarm to 540 and when it finally comes around to being made usable it can kick even more booty.

That is fine. 540's current place holder really should be moved down. While on paper it potentially looks worthy of it, in practice (as it seems with a number of the spells in this circle) its woefully misplaced.

> The GMs have set out to do what they are going to do and nothing we suggest will alter their intended course.

This seems woefully unfair. For everything the development team has done during HSN, we have been engaged with players about those changes and in quite a few cases made later updates based on player feedback and suggestion.

~ Konacon

This seems woefully unfair. For everything the development team has done during HSN, we have been engaged with players about those changes and in quite a few cases made later updates based on player feedback and suggestion.

~ Konacon

I don't disagree and I, like others, thank you for your efforts, time, and consideration. However, the changes to 506 and 515 are not in the same category as the former and based off the myriad of player derived suggestions and subsequent responses by staff, the two will never be congruent. Thus, my statement above.

>This seems woefully unfair. For everything the development team has done during HSN, we have been engaged with players about those changes and in quite a few cases made later updates based on player feedback and suggestion.

I will agree with this. Perhaps nothing WILL change, but the time to rally against irrational change is before it happens, not after it is set in stone and won't be revisited for another 10 years.

Meanwhile, I would rather you stop the unnecessary wreckage of the existing core, profession-defining spells and instead move them to higher level spell spots and make them self-cast and not stackable, before tackling the creation of any new spells. Rapid Fire to 520, Haste to 515, and Stone Skin to 506 is an acceptable solution with self-cast and non-stackable limitations and no cooldown or additional mana cost. ALL other pure spells deemed to be overpowered have been solved in this fashion, and I still don't understand why it wasn't the obvious option for wizards.

It seems a lot of the "balance" has been organized against end game implications. If you're balancing for the post-cap game, ALL professions are very powerful post-cap. At multiple times capped, you SHOULD be. Otherwise, why would anyone have continued playing and hunting their characters for years after hitting level 100?

None of the "power" you see from constant usage of 515 (limited by one's mana supply, which only increases dramatically post-cap), 506 (really shouldn't be an issue except when constantly cast on others), or 519 (really not powerful at ALL until post-cap, and then in no way comparable to 1115 or 317 without a 240-style CS booster) came free. People invested a ton of time, energy, and money into their characters and equipment to achieve the effects they're seeing. It's not fun or fair to undo that when all of the other professions are still able to be exceptionally powerful post-cap.

Why does everyone keep taking the 506/515 changes as a foregone conclusion when obviously the developers are taking stock and revising the planned changes.

If you look at 418, the complaints were heard and then acceptable adjustments were made...whether it makes the spell awesome and useful for everyone is beside the point. They heard the complaint that the failure chance was scaled to high and made adjustments so its reasonable now.

The GMs in general have shown that they are capable of being reasonable and rational...give them a chance to go back to the drawing board.

That said, one suggestion I have for the GMs is to come up with a few proposed ideas for the spells being adjusted...and say these are the choices we are willing to work with...which do you as wizards think is the best way. If you say right now we are exploring options a, b and c...which option do you guys like best, and why. You can at least get some real conversation going instead of the pre-narfing panic that seems common today.

One of the worst things Simu does as a company (in My opinion) is keep things top secret until the big reveal...Sometimes the surprises are nice and cause folks to say Wow that is Awesome (see UAC Mstrike). But often you get the reverse where people say this change is worthless, whack, etc...I'm going to WOW.

if you let the players have a bit more feedback in the pre-development stages you will have less revolt when you implement.

If there is one thing I have learned in 17 years of application development...coding in a vacuum almost always ends badly. You don't have to give the customer everything they want, but you need to at least understand what they want.

>This seems woefully unfair. For everything the development team has done during HSN, we have been engaged with players about those changes and in quite a few cases made later updates based on player feedback and suggestion.

>I will agree with this. Perhaps nothing WILL change, but the time to rally against irrational change is before it happens, not after it is set in stone and won't be revisited for another 10 years.


This couldn't be further from the truth. Actually, the time to argue against a series of changes is after you've experienced the whole scope of the project in effect. My running joke these days is that there are a few wizards out there who've basically become anti-vaxxers: no amount of logic or facts seems to have any effect on them.

Right now, you have a whole host of folks who are judging projected changes against wizardry today, but that's not the reality of those changes. It's been said a million times, and yet it bears repeating: It is extremely difficult to give accurate, logical critiques of one or two specific changes without taking into account the larger backdrop. And until you've seen the dozens of changes that are coming, and until you've actually played a wizard with them all implemented, there is no way to say what effect one or two very specific changes will or won't have. The GMs have said again and again- the problem is that people are using these spells as band aids for a larger set of problems. The ELR releases are designed to deal with the overarching problems so the band aids are no longer necessary. And screaming "BUT IT ISN'T FIXING ANYTHING!" before you know the entire ELR doesn't really present a compelling case.

The rapid, vitriolic posting by an extremely vocal minority of posters is a concerted strategy to try to browbeat the GMs into submission. It makes it appear as though more of the community is up in arms than is. It's also a tactic of exhaustion. "If I scream enough, they'll get so tired of this that they won't make these changes, and I won't have to risk anything". I genuinely hope the GMs realize that and won't validate this approach.

And I apologize to the GMs on behalf of all of us who are willing to give you full faith and to see how this all shakes out before picking up the pitchforks but who haven't been active in this discussion. We see the crazy, and we don't want anything to do with it. Unfortunately, that just helps give the impression that this small minority represents more people than it does.

Also, Estild, I'm sure I've said it before, but I don't disagree with the overall goal so much as the specifics of the replacement and perhaps the way some of this has been communicated.

I'm at work right now, but I have an idea or two to consolidate and refine some previous suggestions. Teaser: I am nerfing my own suggestion!

>Why does everyone keep taking the 506/515 changes as a foregone conclusion when obviously the developers are taking stock and revising the planned changes.

Because the GMs have said the spells are going to be nerfed no matter what.

Heck even putting Rapid Fire in the 540 slot, thus making it cost 40 mana, and making it non-stackable, with a flat 30 second duration, apparently still would have to come with a 1 second cast roundtime.

Let's face it, Rapid Fire is getting nerfed and getting nerfed hard.

And just for reference, from stuff released thus far only 415 would deservedly make that list. 402, 405 and 512 would make it on technicalities because they DO add something that isn't based on seeds. What they add just happens to be so useless it'd be funny if it wasn't so sad.

And just to be clear there are easy solutions for those 3 spells:
402 + earthlore = forage bonus
405 + air = can read spirit spells in imbedibles (spirits are kinda air-like right?)
512 + water = give it a way better proc rate as base and then make it even better with water. Boom. Possibly give water lore a % chance to prevent the frozen creature from acting = water lore skill / 4.

There, three spells made more useful with lore without being overpowered.

OBSERVER

That's a fair assessment, I suppose. Wizards certainly have their fill of fairly useless spells. Stone Fist, Boil Earth, Spell Store (pre-overhaul), and Meteor Swarm are all pretty much useless. Another handful of spells aren't too far behind. The problem is the PTB aren't likely going to want to scrap any spells they buffed with the ELR, so it looks doubtful that Ice Patch/Stone Skin are suddenly going to go from what they are now to a clutch wizard standby.

There is a substantial difference when it comes to implementing lore benefits vs. redesigning entire spells. In some cases, the former can literally be done in a few minutes. Ask GameMaster Ixix how much time he spent on 909's original lore benefit before I had him redesign the spell. Also, doing the former not preclude the latter. There are definitely a number of spells, for all casters, that need to be looked at, but it's a matter of bandwidth.

GameMaster Estild

>I thought you wanted 919 and 240 nerfed? I was making a list!

See the trick is to play reverse psychology, hype a spell as being awesome when in reality it is lackluster in hopes the "nerf" will end up buffing it.

So...please don't nerf Sandstorm...that would be a real shame...

Speaking of spells not being in the appropriate spell slot, what's up with Duplicate being the 18th spell slot of a pure caster's spell circle? I mean, the spell is nice and all, but it should be like, oh I dunno, a 6th level spell.

So we could make duplicate 506 and put haste in the 918 slot and BAM! Now haste is the 18th level spell of a pure's spell circle so it has to be way more powerful so it doesn't need to be nerfed at all.

Thank you, everyone. Thank you.