As the title says, I'm interested to hear the thoughts of my fellow LMs on the recent class changes that went live today. I'm rather curious to get in game this week and try them out for myself too.
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As the title says, I'm interested to hear the thoughts of my fellow LMs on the recent class changes that went live today. I'm rather curious to get in game this week and try them out for myself too.
Deeply disappointed. One of the most effective AOE burst DPS skills was neutered (Ring of Fire limited to a single ring, single target), Wizards Fire was neutered and is mostly pointless now (no DOT at all, no upgrading of Burning Embers), the Wizard's fire benefits are now gated behind another stupid, low damage induction skill (Gust of Wind), which they have gone out of their way to foist on Red-Line LMs in the new trait tree...
Oh, and in case you think it was only the DPS skills that took a hit - because clearly we were an OP DPS class that was ruining the game - they ALSO lowered our +% healing buff on Water Lore, added cool-downs to Power sharing skills, reduced the effectiveness of Power sharing, and made our Power drain not...um...DRAIN anything. But that last one's okay because now our power drain skill does a small amount of lightning damage now. Be still my beating heart.
From a 10,000-ft view, it really looks like the primary purpose of this LM update was to reduce the effectiveness of currently useful skills in order to push use of skills noone wants (Gust of Wind, Pleasant Breeze, etc.). Instead of simply making the unwanted skills significantly BETTER, Standing Stone apparently felt the need to make Red-Line LMs even less fun to play.
*slow clap*
Ring of Fire being single-target is in the list of known issues in patch notes - currently broken, not intentional change.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucens
LM DPS in red line is now stronger overall, though.
This was just the first phase of class work, there is more coming ahead. Bullroarer sub-forum has a LM class feedback thread that is actively read. Some dev updates in there give a sense of what to expect.
In general, I thought they were "mostly harmless" I was hopeful about the "pleasant breeze," but having it gated behind the crit of a dps skill doesn't make much sense and its implementation is clumsy.
I haven't been playing redline today, so I can't say for sure about the dps results
I just logged into my LM and it indeed felt stronger somehow. However, I have kind of the feeling that I'll have to learn to play the red LM in a totally new way. Although this may be somehow interesting, it personally means forgetting the Burning Embers / Wizards Fire rotation for me. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but it felt like I won't manage to have more than two Wizards Fire and up to two additional Burning Embers on one enemy at the same time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Herwegur
Would be interesting for me to know which rotation you're now Walking through against a single target, w/o starting with AoE skills. Happy to see how everybody is adjusting his/her playstyle. Do you even (plan to) use Wizards Fire any more other than pulling mobs?
Back when still new to the game and trying out LM class (long before trait trees), I confess it was the inductions and slower pace that partially attracted me, so I'm biased in liking the new Searing Embers upgrade via Gust of Wind. Actually surprised at myself, as I'm really no fan of stuff changing. GoW is now 3 targets and its damage has increased, and integrating it to interact with Burning Embers made a previously useless skill relevant again. Now the Red trait for GoW becomes relevant too, and Pleasant Breeze in Yellow (now a heal) since GoW will be seeing much more use.Quote:
Originally Posted by StrykerwolF_HD
I tested it and ran one solo instance in beta (Perfect Picnic, coming with Summer festival), found this new rotation interesting and refreshing. But mob density was low, and I haven't done enough mob killing yet. I bet my reflexes will be confused a bit at not doing that insta-whoosh at mobs affected by embers. But I'm legit surprised at how positive I find the GoW change.
Overall, the feeling with new rotation is of greater situational availabilities: like the updated skillset opens up the LM toolkit rather than constricts. Liberating vibe, as it should be. Hasn't felt this good just to kill random mobs since before the trait trees. No more generic Boring Embers spam in Red. Now there's more choices and situational affordances. Can upgrade embers via GoW (and spread them, with trait), Lightning Strike now has just 10s cd so can use cashout even more, and LM gains a new damage-channel skill that has Lightning damage too (Power of Knowledge is now this). More things to do in a fight, what would have otherwise been the same BE spam.
The LI legacy for GoW might become interesting again, now that it's relevant and its damage is increased. To replace the sad obsolete Wizards Fire crit legacy, since Wizards Fire lost its DoT component. Something was alluded concerning Wizards Fire being reimagined in a new way, it was almost removed in its current form but was put back after mass protest. So at least it's still around, even while so basic. But something more for it is being considered (re: LM Bullroarer class feedback thread).
p.s. For those disliking slow inductions, new tiers in 'rapid fire' trait decrease inductions in Red up to 25%. Power management becomes more of an issue again too, with faster attacks.
Haven't noticed much of a difference in the feel of Blue line. Red line rotation has certainly changed, but overall DPS seems better. The reduction in Lightning Strike's CD has made it a much bigger part of my rotation, and GoW does modest damage, so it's not too much of an issue to add it to the rotation. Overall damage seems better, so less upgrades of BE to SE aren't much of a hit (in fact, sometimes BE to LS would knock 60-80k health off of some of the mobs around Dale, so there wasn't always time to trigger GoW). Oddly enough, I found that sometimes I would use GoW when there were 2 BE DoTs and suddenly there would be 2 SEs and a BE (not sure if that is WAI and I'm just missing something). Haven't played enough with Yellow line to see how well the changes function.
Oh, you are correct...versus a single target, LM DPS has now increased, albeit through using more induction skills that were unnecessary before, like Lightning Strike and Gust of Wind. But so what? When fighting landscape mobs, the idea with high-level LMs has always been to pull multiple mobs if possible - that's what our best skills have been geared towards. Shifting us to stronger single target and weaker AOE damage is a net loss, both in time spent in fights, and in our usefulness in groups. Single target DPS LM's are a joke compared to any other class...when we DO contribute in groups, be it small group instances, or in the Moors, or in trash pulls in Raids, we are only useful because of our AOE damage.Quote:
Originally Posted by StrykerwolF_HD
Which brings me to my original point: by not fixing the lag issue with Ring of Fire - our #2 AOE damage - and instead just lazily nerfing it, then relegating Wizards Fire to the dustbin by taking away 2 of its 3 effects, especially its most powerful effect (upgrading Burning Embers), the developers have removed the single greatest STEADY DPS capability we used to have - DOTS. Because the greatest steady DPS rotation which was always at the center of any good LM's damage with multiple mobs was (1) Burning Embers, (2) Wizard's Fire (x2 if necessary), (2b-OPTIONAL) Staff Sweep, (3) Ring of Fire, (4) Lightning Storm w/ Fierce Lighting bonus, (5) PROFIT. :) The BE DOTs were upgraded by WF (with NO induction, mind you), then the RoF would slam every mob with multiple rings of fire (big damage), which would also add further BE DOTs from the Rings themselves, then LS would come in and cash them all out (most of the time every mob had 4-5 dots on it by that point) + massive damage + Fierce Lightning extra damage. It was impressive, and the best way to do burst DPS. This was, without a doubt, our best set of tools for reliable DPS.
Well that's all out the window. Gust of Wind to upgrade the BE DOTs can only be used once every 10 seconds, AND it has an induction to be set back/interrupted, AND you can't move and use it, AND it has no DOT itself, like WF used to have. Lose-lose-lose-lose. Nerfing Ring of Fire takes out the second biggest damage component of the whole chain. Result - our AOE DPS drops precipitously.
But hey, at least we can kill one mob at a time slightly faster! :rolleyes:
I'm sure casual LMs who don't Raid, don't Moors, and generally don't care about DPS much will also not care much about this either. But I have been playing my LM for 10 years in all types of content, and I am sad to see the unnecessary AOE nerf. I mean, it's not like we were Barrage Hunters breaking the damage curves, right?
Sad.
I'm not happy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sporozc09
In the last beta round the AoE was nerfed down by 10-12K compared to round 3 and that downgrade is now on live. Albeit it is slightly better than prior to U22.2, but still far away from to be competitive, what the dev intended to do *LOL*
Single target damage: you can/could go in a raid for approx. 25-28K (you will need a staff with single the damage legacies), but no-one need you with that DPS as single target damage dealer.
AoE DPS has been increased as well across all skills. Ring of Fire is on the list of known issues, as mentioned above. It is not a nerf.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucens
Wish we had more long-time LM players contributing to beta feedback on Bullroarer. It's honestly a loss we didn't have more input like this while beta was still in progress. More voices giving detailed examples in how new rotation affects DoTs, it is concrete evidence that really prompts revaluation in how some things are implemented.
Work on LM is not done, and even work on LM DPS is not yet finished. Please do join and keep weighing in on Bullroarer LM class feedback thread, about things that aren't satisfactory. Not sure if this here thread will be seen by the dev, but LM class thread on Bullroarer is actively being checked.
I raid on my LM and do all kinds of content, just four years behind you, sadly though due to limited testing time I could barely dip in and my feedback was limited to what I could notice. To any LM vets reading this - don't get discouraged, we really do need more input. Current (new) LM dev is far more responsive than the one we used to have during HD. I know many've been burned out from that 2013 closed beta and consider leaving feedback futile, but this time LM is getting closer attention from a more responsive dev. More input from veteran players offering concrete cases how the new rotation affects DPS will be an asset - especially since more DPS tweaks have been promised, it's not over yet.
Am I generally pleased? Yes.
Do I raid? No.
Will I need to adjust my play style? Heck yes.
For the last three years, I have gotten by with letting the Saber-cat tank in blue line: the AoE effects surpassed the bear's aggro bonuses in landscape. Now I can't get away with that because I put out DPS like my eleventy-one yellow RK. Red line, barring the Ring of Fire bug, is awesome: I am going to see if I can survive in Mordor in it.
HOWEVER, I am in the camp of those who miss Wizard's Fire's old functionality, and wish Gust of Wind had simply been abandoned on the scrapheap. The "spread embers" effect (which I've never traited anyway) could have been put on Wind Lore, which already has "spread things about" functionality.
And this would have been a great time to restore the LM's power-draining functionality, not plant a gravestone atop it.
I am happy with the changes that have been made. It could have been way better and there is still enough polishing to be done, but steps have been made.
I think most work lies in blue line (with a really big goal towards viability of pets) and there has been already a lot of feedback towards that on the br forum.
I hope red/yellow still will get attention, but overall very happy with 95% of the changes being made.
There is some improvement to our dps in red line. I don't necessarily like having to learn a new rotation and I don't like what they have done to our dots. I don't know how to put it but it all seems awkward to me now. In blue line, I noticed the bear loosing aggro more often now too. In both lines, I did notice one thing. When I got the aggro from the bear or had two mobs on me in Dale, my waterlore is not healing properly. At least it doesn't seem to be to me. There is about a 4 sec delay in front of waterlore before that heal even takes effect. Good grief, no kidding? I need that heal now not later. I hope they do fix waterlore where it actually can help save my life by chance. Thanks to all of you!
There is a significant delay post use of Staff Sweep for next skill, unlike before update so I assume it has something to do with the way it has been redesigned to work as part of a red line passive?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Granlu
I hate to say it, but if you're seeing these issues now - it is quite likely that they have been there for a while. Nothing was done to the execution timing of either of these skills, and water-lore went mostly untouched.Quote:
Originally Posted by Napoleon21
It's always possible that some weird interaction has snuck in to mess with them in some way of course, but I'll have to take another look at them to see what might have changed if so.
-Vastin
The thing with Water-lore is you removed its initial heal so only the HoT component remains. Seeing as that only ticks every 4s, it is true that the first healing from that skill now only happens 4s after the skill was actually cast.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
Speaking of Water-Lore; it now places an empty effect on a target if you don't have the inc healing mod traited from Yellow line (just gives an empty buff icon that says 'Water-lore' and does nothing). Might want to clean that up?
Ah, you're quite right about the initial pulse removal. That was something we've been generically doing on a lot of DOT's because it makes their tooltips much easier to read, and we usually just move the equivalent damage onto the skill hit.Quote:
Originally Posted by B749
I'll see if it makes sense to speed up the tick rate of water lore in my next pass - and yes, I should find a way to clean up that non-buff. ;)
-Vastin
Any idea when that would be? And can u give a sneak peak of what classes your working on?( you personally cause your the best)Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
Even if i don't like the downgrade you made in the LM's AoE damage between the 3rd and 4th beta round, i highly appreciate your interaction with us. I don't know if others at SSG really realized how important this interaction is for us players between the devs and us.
Therefore here a "thumbs up" and a "Thank You!"
Thank you for the reply.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
I can confirm that this is an issue, and has been for months now. I first noticed it with the release of the Mordor expansion, although it could have existed before then. Gust of Wind also has a similar issue, not applying damage until another skill (damaging or not) applies its effect. This one has existed for years to my knowledge.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
Overall, I was happy with these changes on Bullroarer and the direction they were heading in (for the most part). I do, however, think the timeline was unnecessarily rushed, and that they should definitely not have been released yet. This is a problem with the way SSG (and many companies) view their products: get it out as soon as possible to move on to the next thing. The problem is that the job wasn't finished. A clear indicator of this is the Known Bugs section on the release notes. When releasing new content, its understandable, albeit usually undesirable, to have such a rigid time-table. With class updates, which should focus on fixing persisting issues and bugs, this doesn't make sense though. The work should be finished first before release.
My biggest criticisms with the current workings on live are as follows:
- General:
- Wizard's Fire: This skill simply swapped with Gust of Wind in terms of usefulness. Without the Lightning Storm reset from the Abyss set bonus, it has no usefulness at all. This should not have made it to live. Wizard's Fire needs, at bare minimum, some brief yet potent DoT component to give LM's something useful to do while moving. This would be even better if it had some sort of synergy with other skills as well.
- Power of Knowledge: The power restore on this skill is too low now. I'm not saying it needs to be 1-2k per pulse like it used to be, but I don't think doubling it would be terribly overpowered. The current power costs of skills, especially heals, is way too high to warrant the nerf to the self-restore. If a dps class runs out of power, a fight slows down. If an LM runs out of power, a group wipes.
- The Power of Knowledge trait needs to be split and expanded on. The damage component should get a trait in Red line (in tier 1 or 2), and the Power restore component needs to have a trait in yellow. Both of these traits should have their respective magnitudes scaled higher than what is currently possible.
- Share the Power: As many others have stated, Share the Power skills should not have both been nerfed as heavily as they have been, and have had the cooldowns added. From what I'm seeing on live, Hunters still have minor power problems regardless of whether they are red or blue, requiring restores still, and Champs as well are having issues (especially in blue line with how skills were sped up). A possible fix for this to make it less of an indiscriminate buff would be to increase the magnitude of the trait Flow of Power in tier 4 of yellow. I would recommend doubling the magnitude of each rank (max of +50%).
- Red:
- Ring of Fire: While a stated bug, probably due to to the time-table of release, this should not have made it to live. It is a substantial nerf to AoE dps. It needs to be made a 5-target AoE again. Also, if one ring is all that is possible now, the damage it causes when entering the ring should be increased to what it used to be for 5 rings to be down. since movement is so important in some situations, and LMs are fairly useless while moving, this is a necessary buff in my opinion with regards to dps.
- Share the Power: As many others have stated, Share the Power skills should not have both been nerfed as heavily as they have, and have had the cooldowns added. From what I'm seeing on live, Hunters still have minor power problems regardless of whether they are red or blue, requiring restores still, and Champs as well are having issues (especially in blue line with how skills were sped up).
- Lightning skill cashout: Since Burning Embers can't just be indefinitely added to a target anymore because of the cooldown on Gust of Wind, it is a serious detriment that the Lightning cashouts prioritize Searing Embers over Burning Embers for the cashout. This should be fixed, or at the very least, the damage from the cashout should be greatly increased when consuming Searing Embers to make it actually worthwhile to consume the more potent DoT.
- Yellow:
- Level-Headed (trait): This trait is useless. It needs to be replaced by something else entirely.
- Pleasant Breeze: This skill needs a drastic magnitude increase to the heal, especially considering how unreliable the proc is. Even if it was a guaranteed proc on every Gust of Wind, the magnitude needs to be substantially increased. It should be at least a 20k heal, non-crit. I would also like to see it not be on crits, but on Gust of Wind uses to make it more reliable. After all, we only have two heals at the moment.
- Inner Flame: I don't understand why with trait-trees healing was moved from blue to yellow, but this skill remained in blue, and was nerfed. This should be moved to yellow (maybe replacing Level-Headed), and should be an AoE heal for the entire group. If Turbine/SSG was/is intent on giving healing to yellow instead of blue, they should be consistent about it. Either give healing back to blue and make it a sort of healing line with pet buffing, or be consistent about decisions, and move Inner Flame with all other healing.
- Water-Lore: There is currently no initial heal. I know this was touched on earlier in the thread, but I just want to reiterate: this needs to be fixed. Having initial heals didn't really make the tooltips hard to read in my opinion, this was an unnecessary change.
- Beacon of Hope: Same as Water-Lore: HoT component has no initial heal. The radius of the HoT component needs to be increased, as 4m is ridiculously small. As it is called "Beacon", it should have a much greater radius, maybe 15-20m. Currently, this skill is often used on a tank, and tanks are rarely within 4m of the rest of the group/raid, making the HoT pretty useless.
As I have said, the changes made are a step the right direction in my opinion, but they came way too soon, and definitely need followup work. I do want to say though, thank you, Vastin, for actually interacting with us. Even when making changes that we don't particularly like, it makes it an easier pill to swallow when the thought process behind the change is explained at least. You're efforts are greatly appreciate by us all.
Firemind scored a devastating hit with Improved Wizard's Fire on the Training-dummy for 19,926 Fire damage to Morale. u sure?Quote:
Originally Posted by ColMcStacky
Wizard fire and Inner flame skills are about cooperation between pet and Lm. If their utility should be improved, then only in blue line.Quote:
Originally Posted by ColMcStacky
Thank you for engaging with us on the forums, Vastin! I have to say, I'm pretty excited and grateful that the class designer weighed on my thread on the LM sub-forum :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
Also, many thanks to all my fellow LM players who have shared their thoughts too! I definitely need to get in game and mess around with different trait set ups and skill rotations. It will probably take me a while to settle into a new groove. Prior to the update, I usually run in yellow, both solo and grouping, (occasionally play blue or red just for fun) so my approach is typically to send the pet in (bear for tank if solo), fire/frost lore, wind-lore while bear builds aggro, then ToW or LotRD
for the stun followed by BE & WF. Then, I throw in Staff Strike/Sweep while BE cools down, hit BE -> WF again when off cool-down while the SI wears off the mob, stun again, BE -> DEAD. Tips for revised approach welcome since two young kids (toddler and baby) and a relatively early bedtime mean I'm lucky if I get any significant play-time and really lucky if I get more than 1.5 hours any given night.