W/SoT Balance Discussion

[Hulkling]

WoT, DS, and Druid Reptile are retuned and on test. I don't have a toon on test of the proper level to test it out....anyone?

Prathun mentions it here http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts ... _id=133689

[Siocnarf]

Its a nerf as far as i can tell so far.It leaves a icon in short buff duration for 8 or 10 sec and during that period it cannot re-trigger.My sk friend was cursing like a sailor last vish we did because the rune effect on sk line has the same crap and he was getting shoved around like popcorns in the machine while spiting shadows.

[Thebobo]

With the exception of having fun now and then with Vindi like mobs I personally never cared much about WOT and would trade it in heartbeat for more snap agro.

But I also know WoT had large following and became a mainstay for many lower end and more casual Paladins. About the only way I would care to see it revisited is to bring back the old version and equivalently scaled up to level 80. It was hardly overpowered as it was.

[Brohg]

It was pretty exceptionally overpowered. The healing it provided was out of scale with the paladin class, its own mana cost, its duration, the whole deal. WoT has a large following and still is a mainstay for nearly every high end and hard core Paladin. Your ambivalence is a pretty rare exception among paladins I know or have heard of.

[Normy]

So its another damn nerf??

I mean, how does he get off using terminology of "returned" if it will proc less often?

Although I do like the idea of it critting again, that was long overdue. Any more people willing to weigh in on this? I don't have the patience to level another paladin on another server just to see if we are getting screwed again or if something good might come of fiddling with spells.

[Bruennor]

It was only overpowered in content that was old. Content that was easily soloable by any class, raid content that was soloable by many classes, content that was faction/tradeskill based that many other classes could already kill more than us in the same amount of time.

So I don't exactly see why it was nerfed.

On modern content, the unnerfed version wouldnt be over powered. On future content I doubt it would be either since mobs only hit harder every expansion.

Always see soe take and take and take, thought wot was a gift for all the taking, but nope, gave us a gift with a poison apple in the middle.

I don't use the spell anymore due to my feelings regarding it and its upgrade, and my general dissatisfaction with how the game has been treated over the last 2 years, and the changes coming look suspect.

[Hulkling]

its always critted, and has never stopped critting. dunno wtf he's talking about. I'm guessing the 1-tick HoT will crit with Healing Boon AAs maybe

[Normy]

I was pretty sure that when the first nerf bat hit, it was taken off the crit ability list. There is a great quote running around somewhere of Prath saying the reasoning behind it was because "some paladins were getting greater use out of it because of their AA's".... which is kinda the whole point to AA's in the first place. Maybe that was for the increased heal amount instead of crits, not really sure I was too annoyed to really pay close attention to how the pine cone enema was being done.

Since I barely use it now, I really don't notice if it crits or not, I rarely notice procs from it when I'm dealing with mobs that hit for 2k+ on average.

As for the discussion of WoT being overpowered or not, that conversation has been done to death. In my opinion, it was the most powerful spell we had, and maybe thats why it was nerfed. It did get abused, and it got noticed. Its been stated numerous times, it will NEVER get put back to the form it was once in, no amount of complaining will change that with the extremely dim-witted 'I-hate-knight-class' Prath at the wheel.

[Luthair]

[Arslayn]

If WoT was overpowered then how is Lassitude and its upgrade not? Lassitude procs the same as the old un-nerfed WoT works off all the same AA's so heals are extended and crit and mob con makes no difference on its proc rate, oh and last but not least it also casts a slow on the mobs.

[Kianor]

[Veril]

[Dorillion]

Ouch!! on 250 mobs hitting you.

[Normy]

WoT was nerfed because of the various other ways people found to exploit it. Imagine gathering up 20 level 30 mobs, dragging them around, make sure they are to your back, and fighting a much more powerful "raid" mob that you shouldn't be able to fight. The amount of procs going off would keep you healed up the entire time, and getting casts off while fighting was easy enough to do with spell haste and/or horse mount.

People used variations of that method for grinding xp as well, just using less adds. And it was noticed. That made it overpowered. In a raid setting on modern content, its not likely to save you because of the large amounts of damage output by the mobs. That said, I've not seen a pally clear most of PoFire in a single pull like shakerpaging, but that stayed in the game for 6+ years?

My solution would have been to not make it proc on trivial content, and let the level increase handle the rest. Having too many green mobs at level 80 could still kill most paladins, because as the levels have gone up, mob DPS has increased much faster than the damage mitigation of a pally. But then, I like knight classes, and Prath does not. So he made it useless, like so many spell lines before it.

[Bruennor]

I am curious, exactly what raid mob that nobody should kill was killable by a paladin with a group of lv 30 mobs on him?

And I used the skill to exp on murks in wos. I had 3500 ac, and I couldnt handle more than 4 murks tops, otherwise I had to use loh, clicky group heal, and so on. So I know most of the paladins in game could not use the spell to get worthwhile exp. So due to paladins being able to kill a few new raid mobs that were already killable by other classes, and the highest end paladins being able to grind exp a bit easier, wot was nerfed for all the people who could do neither, as well as those who could do one, the other, or both.

There was no reason for it not to work on low content. All of our spells scale downwards far better than they scale upwards, but the fun one we got was nerfed because it was too fun, if I do say so my self. They should of done a much milder nerf, like lowering the number of mobs that could proc it to something like 5, kind of like how they nerfed the wizard beams.

[Brohg]

lol four exp mobs at once beating on you, solo. And you won, because of WoT. Totally great argument for the spell's balance.

[Grungloe]

Take a look at what this does to druids for healing.

Once upon a time they were almost brought close to the other priests for sustainable healing in exp groups. Now? They are even further behind than ever before. Is it any wonder that they become even fewer and far between?

[shiftie]

[Saeel]

[dindaur]

my only annoyance regarding this whole continuing tunare fiasco drama nonsense is that languor still remains this infinate proc machine while the rest of the proc spells based upon the rate of inc hits are getting nerfed into the ground.

i guess sony just doesnt think a slow is overpowering, even if its cast maybe... an infinate amount of times in a minute, i guess a slowed mob is considered ok versus a healed player.

i mean, it makes sense, tunare used to be like god mode basically. if you had enough mobs and a corner to prop yourself against, you would be full health for at least... what... 20 seconds? then cast it again. i think we figured out it was 1 or 2 cheals, but over time, and uh, it would come as soon as you got a hit, so its sort of like autoheal.

anyhow, anyone who played through it got a nice treat for awhile, we had some fun, then it got nerfed. now i just really am tired of hearing about it heh. i think the devs need to uh move on as well, its not worth their focus, there's more important things like the new abilities to focus on. every time i see languor spam, i uh, get a little sick heh. call it a tunare flashback, heh.

[Kianor]

[Veril]

[Ghirador]

so dev's have time to retune wot and they still have no time to fix aurora of morrow. priceless. oh wait, aurora isn't overpowered its useless. i forget they only have time to retune overpowered spells.

[Kianor]

[dindaur]

[Normy]

And part of what people are still missing here.

No, I guess WoT isn't a 'core' spell line for paladins. But what is exactly? All of our spell lines are just copy/paste less effective versions of cleric spells, except on ones that we would actually like. We lost our paci line even though that continued to get upgrades for other classes. Our root hasn't been touched in 15 levels. For some reason they feel the need to force our buffs to be refreshed on the hour every hour, but other than that they are last expansions buff. We are not worthy of a high-end rez, apparently this would eliminate the need for clerics or something /boggle.

We have stuns, which have been taking many hits over the years in usefulness. We have brells, the bastard half-twin of a BST buff. We now have the burst line, which is the best thing that we have left, but then our heal crits took a hit because we once again were effective (apparently that is against the rules).

Ward gave us something truely unique to us. It was THE spell to have as a pally, something we had to level 70 times for, but gave us the ability to save ourselves besides hoping we didn't fizzle again. I did use it to solo, when I couldn't find a group it was a decent alternative. In an Lesson burn in WoS, I could come out with 2-3 AA's depending on luck with slays and if my root didn't break and get me killed. Of course, burning my lesson in a good group other places would result in 4-5 AA's.

Of course, now I'm back to running for the zone if I have more than one mob on me without a group. Solo is not worth it now, and they effectively destroyed another spell line, one that actually made the game a little fun for us. Yes, it was a bit overpowered, in places like HoH, I could round up like 8 mobs and beat my way through them. Of course, they are worth next to no xp these days. But while I was doing that, I did have the fun of watching a warrior gather up 30 mobs, disc, and wipe them out in about a minute while never dropping below 70% health.

[Brohg]

But there's no additional effect from multiple procs of Lass line, is the point. Additional procs of WoT/Reptile/Dskin multiply the effect of the buff.

[Saeel]

[Grungloe]

funny thing is, nobody ever brings up the clerics solo'ing 20+ mobs at a time with Ward of Requital in these conversations of class balance and absurd solo'ing power.

[Hulkling]

[knytul]

so what are u gonna do about it Hulk?

[Hulkling]

I've mentioned it before, and it just gets blown off. When I actually have a chance to test the new WoT I will make direct comparisons to cleric ward and give them my input (again).

[Saintsaens]

[Bruennor]

[Brohg]

Plain stupid how, Bruennor? I don't think it's stupid at all, but if it is, certainly not plainly so. I'll take stupid if it fits, but you need to back yourself up, big time.

WoT extended your capabilities in a way incompatible with balance limits on an efficient and convenient single spell. So it wasn't the difference between life and death in that case (though it happened to be in other cases), so what? Without it, you were required to use a bunch of other abilities, playing hard to do something cool. With the original WoT, those abilities were not required, and a paladin without all your accomplishments would do the same thing, just walk up to the four exp mobs and bash them to death without a second thought.

There are make-or-break, encounter-changing powers. Those powers aren't generally convenient, efficient, or cheap vis-a-vis time invested to get them. Like each AC augment, each incremental +3dmg on a 2h weapon, each AA point, every ability a character gets is intended to be just one more tool in building character power, the accumulation of all of which makes a great character. In the form of its initial release, Ward of Tunare was too good. "I have WoT, so [whatever] is okay" isn't a good sentiment for game balance. The same problem is encountered in some other classes, just yours happens to be fixable.

[Arslayn]

Heh retuned to make it crit capable? it already does crit......so they are changing.... nothing?

[Unmei]

[Kianor]

[Bruennor]

[knytul]

ok after looking this whole thing over...after the devs rearrange HOW we get our heal...the only major change i see....is 12 procs instead of 24. (4 procs a min, duration: 3 min) So um...how is this NOT a nerf to an Already Overnerfed spell?