New spells/spell fixes

[Yesak]

Okay, instead of trying to turn the spell critique in the direction I wanted it to go, I'll simply start a new thread and see if I can't do better. We all know that some of our spells are clearly broken, useless or underpowered. In this thread, I want a discussion of either brand new spells if you have some creativity flowing, fixes of current spells or offer up new, upgraded versions of spells we already have. And dont worry about bringing stuff up from a LONG time ago. Anything you want or think we need. I promise not to get the blowtorch out if you honestly have an idea (no matter how odd it seems).

Anyway, as far as structure, please do it like this: name of spell you're fixing, upgrading or name of your new spell in bold. Then offer up your views on it and proceed from there. Hopefully this will keep everything organized, more or less. Got the idea? Well, gunna give a few examples anyway.

Ice Nukes

I think it is obvious that our ice nukes are pretty much useless. No surprise here. The fix I am proposing is to either increase the damage done or decrease the cast time to get it closer to be somewhat usable.

Macnair simply wants this spell line gone, and others have expressed this opinion.

Upgrade to Spirit of Bih'Li

Remember a time where EVERYONE wanted this spell? +15 attack was UBER! I think it's high time to look at this spell again and give us an upgrade to it. Maybe an attack buff that will stack with champion and our other buffs? Or anyone else got ideas for this? I think it might lead to something.

New spell of this was thought of years ago, we like it or change it?:

New Spell
1: See Invisible(2)
2: Increase Movement by 65%
3: Water Breathing(2)
4: Ultravision
6: Increase ATK by 25

Duration: 1 hour(s)
Location: ANY
Target Type: Group v2

Any amount of mana, any level


Pets

It has been discussed at length in other places. However, I dont want to hear how crappy our pet is. I want to hear what ideas you have to fix dogdog. Bundler had a few ideas that might work, however, they were kind of garbled in his post and werent explained fully. Also, I think I got him mad so he might not post again . I hope he does so he can fully explain his ideas. There might be something there.

Macnair proposes a set subtraction from mage pets (aka, if mage pet has 15k hp, ours would get 13k or if theirs had 50k, ours would have 48k)

Unmei proposes a % based equation from that of mage pets (aka, if our pet has 80% of mage pet, then if mage pet has 10khp, ours would have 8k or if theirs had 100k, ours would have 80k)


Anyway, follow this template for discussion. Always add a title to what you are discussing. Hopefully this will yield some positive results.

[Unmei]

The pet issue is simple.

Stop getting tied up in crap like pet foci. Pet foci have nothing to do with this. Identify what you don't like about your pets and try to get it fixed. What's the matter with it? DPS is too low? Not enough HPs? What? How does it stack up in these areas compared to other pets?

Be advised, however, that, er, shaman pets have always sucked, so it's going to take a pretty powerful arguement to break that precedent.

[Yesak]

I dont have time at the moment to do a large scale, cross-class comparrison at the moment. However, I'll get one generated and/or edit the wiki page that we have here to include everything up to date as I can find when I get home from work. It will probably have tons of errors but we can start to work out the pet issues from there. I'll propose something once I gather all the data. *edit* it seems Sam has collected most of the information that is readily accessable, which makes this more annoying because there are gaping holes in it. I'll continue to try and find some new stuff and might just end up grabbing a few of my friends to parse stuff in game.

I'll also be updating the first post as we go along to keep things as organized as possible. Such as, if someone brings up a new spell or a new spell to fix, I'll add it there.

[Macnair]

Ice Nukes

I would suggest that this line be considered obsolete. Killing baby goblins in Everfrost at level 3 and 4, the ice nuke was pretty good. It has gone downhill in usefulness ever since. Let's not have another ice nuke, 81 to 85, or ever again.

Upgrade to Spirit of Bih'Li

I think it was Brohg who had a write up on this in the past. Was it on one of our Top Ten lists, once upon a time? Does someone have the link handy for that?

Pets

Pets have increased on a percentage basis, each time we get a new one. That has made it so that a weak pet continues to be a weak pet, expansion after expansion. My proposal would be that shaman pets should, going forward from now, correspond to mage pets, in terms of hp, defense, and damage. That is, the benchmark would not be "What were shaman pets like, last expansion," but "What are mage pets like, in this expansion?" Everybody knows mage pets are more powerful than shaman pets, so the correspondence can't be an equivalence. I would suggest the correspondence be done not as a percentage, but as a subtraction: perhaps 2000 less hp, for example, rather than whatever percentage it would take to achieve the same number of hp. That way, going forward, the level 87 shaman pet would again have 2000 less hp than the level 87 mage pet, rather than starting to fall farther behind in actual hp while maintaining the same percentage.

[Unmei]

I don't really see how a correspondance like you suggest can be viable in the long term.

Sure, maybe since mage pets have 20khps now, 18k might be okay for a shaman pet. But in three expansions when mage pets have 80k HP, should shaman pets have 78k? I don't think that's reasonable. That's why they use percents.

[WaringMcMarrin]

[Macnair]

[Yesak]

I think a better way of going about it would be a percentage based rather than straight up numbers. Say shaman pets have 80% of mage pet hp? Might have to chew through some numbers to see where it falls, but that could be somethin to look into.

[Brohg]

Go reroll beastlords, dorks. Shm pets could only tank when slow was 4/5ths of a mesmerize.

[Veril]

Biting the bullet and redoing pets for all classes and how focii affect them would prove worthwhile from a developers point of view rather than having so many tiered pets. That way they would have much greater savings of time in the future. There would be some changes to some pets, but the overall effect would really repay back the time spent reworkign things many fold.

Heck it's probably easier to do this sweeping change now than to add in another 80 pet variants next expansion. This is the sort of thing that a longer development cycle should benefit.

[Unmei]

[Yesak]

I found the Bih'Li post from years ago, or at least one of them:

The proposed spell was this, according to Beafly's post:

New Spell
1: See Invisible(2)
2: Increase Movement by 65%
3: Water Breathing(2)
4: Ultravision
6: Increase ATK by 25

Duration: 1 hour(s)
Location: ANY
Target Type: Group v2

Any amount of mana, any level

Now, I like everything there and maybe we can ask for a bit more attack, maybe 50? 75? What do you guys think?

Also, with pets, we dont want them to be tanks. We just are tired of them being consistently 1 rounded by trivial group mobs. I'm personally not as uber as many of you, but I think something is strange when my pet, fully buffed with shaman buffs and Tem still gets 1 rounded (or close to it) in Ashengate of all places. I'm not looking for a tank, I'm looking for something that wont die at the drop of a hat.

And updating the charts Sam has put together is proving to be difficult. It seems no one really does parses anymore to find out the actual stats of their pets *sighs*

[Vasei]

[Retron]

[Unmei]

[Funi]

Is that relevant when he is describing an unslowed mob?

[Yesak]

Ignore slow. It has NOTHING to do with the argument here. None at all. The major problem is how many rounds our pet can take. Slowed or unslowed, it doesnt matter, that is not the problem here. If I see slow mentioned here again with dogdog, I'll pull what little hair I have left out. What we are looking at is dogdog used to be able to take 7 rounds before hitting the deck, now its down to about 2 at most on a normal mob that hits for 1400. There are plenty of group trash mobs that do much more than that. With mobs hitting for 2k a pop, dogdog gets 1 rounded. A pet like druid bear or cleric hammer that is more novelty than tool I see no problem with it getting 1 rounded. However, I believe out pet should be a tool and should at least have enough hp/survivablity to be used as such. Just my opinion though.

[Vasei]

You can't ignore slow.
You can't ignore the fact that our pet gained enrage (admittedly he's usually dead before it has a chance to fire) but when it DOES go of, he's a helluva better speed bump than he ever was.

You can't look at one single ability of the class and say that it could/should be improved in a vacuum. The days when our pet could offtank ANYTHING were before Cougar, before Lassitude, before slow mitigation, before the game basically did a 180 degree flip in design. Also let's remember that back when Speedbump was All That And A Bag Of Chips - we, collectively as shaman, all complained about how much he sucked. (oh right, he gained innate dual wield, the ability to equip armor, etc etc etc)

Nobody's saying you don't have a right to prefer a stronger pet. But please - if you're going to argue that dogdog offtanking is a major part of your strategy and vision for your class, be prepared to mention what you'd like to sacrifice for that boost. At least then you're making a coherent case.

[Tordail]

[Retron]

[Funi]

I'd like to sacrifice slows for a better heal But I wanna keep champ and cougar. Make it so...

[Yesak]

Ok, I guess I'm not clear in my intentions with what *I* want for dogdog. I dont want him to be an effective offtank in anything but the most trivial of places. What I want from him is to be able to survive to make any sort of use out of his dps or speedbumping ability. I dont think his dps needs to be significantly altered. A little harder hit would be nice, but he's just a long term DoT, not a DPS machine. Agian, this is just my opinion. His survivability is an issue though. However, if you think I've completely destroyed any argument I have by saying that slow doesnt matter because I wish to discuss how many rounds dogdog can take, explain it. If I'm wrong, I'll accept that I'm wrong and scrap my arugments.

As for what we'll give up for a stronger pet, well, I cant see giving up a whole lot since I'm personally not asking the world. More hp on the pup, or some sort of mitigation or avoidance. I'll think on what I'd be willing to give up.

Anyway, explain to me (cause i might be a little slow in the head) how slow affects how many rounds dogdog can take. I'm not talking about total time he can survive. Just straight up rounds. You could argue that total rounds dont mean anything and that the time it takes from mob starting hitting to time pup dies is the real issue. That would kill my argument and that would be affected by slow. If that is where you're going with breaking my argument?

[Unmei]

Why does it matter how many rounds he can take? Last I checked, how quickly you can root/debuff/heal wasn't measured in "rounds". Please explain why "rounds" is a relevant measure of anything. I think the burden is on you to prove why slow shouldn't be considered.

[Yesak]

Because slow is a variable that isnt always in play. When using the pet as a speedbump in order to get a root or the like off, chances are the mob is not slowed (or at least that's the idea I have in my head, could be wrong, shaman could be instantly slowing everything).

As for rounds being something you can work with. A round is the max damage a mob does every attack (since our pet seems to be hit with max damage and all swings nearly all of the time). It is just easier (in my head at least) to work with the damage a mob is doing each attack (or per round) than it is to say, well, with a mob hitting for 1000, our pet will live for .5secs longer than a mob hitting for 1400. Just larger numbers without decimals or tiny incriments (that are important, but hard to work with). Rounds may be a little clunky to work with, but it is easier to visualize than seconds our pet can survive (again in my opinion).

Question about rounds though. Do most NPCs attack at somewhat the same rate or is there vast differences between each individual mob type? If there are vast differences, my argument is totally screwed. If mobs, more or less, attack at similar rates, rounds can be easier to visualize and get the same point. I guess I should have looked that up before I launched into my argument

Slow would come into play if I wished for pet to act as a true offtank, which is not what I'm wanting him to do (although others can argue that if they wish).

[Tordail]

How is slow a variable that doesn't always come into play when there's a Shaman standing there? I don't understand your logic.

[Funi]

He wants the pet to live UNTIL he can cast slow. I don't use a pet for the most part cause it just gets annoying to have to cast it over and over again and rebuff it. So I really don't have a frame of reference here but I'm pretty sure I understand his argument. He wants the pet to live long enough to react to the mob. If casting slow is 3 seconds and the pet is dead before the mob is slowed it's really irrelevant weather you have slow or not. The pet is dead both ways. Now if some one wants to argue that his claim of the pet being dead before he should be able to react then that's different but to say he has slow (which he can't cast in time to keep the pet alive) so that's a basis of keeping the pet so fragile is well....I donno.. Me, I could care less I don't cast the stupid thing very often. He just dies to damn fast.

[Yesak]

Funi understands what I'm saying. Generally when I'm using the pet as speedbump its when there are adds and I have to react rather quickly. Getting a mob rooted or VP'd is generally better than slowing and then trying to do that. Also, I dont know about you Tord, but just because a shaman is there doesnt mean every mob instantly gets slowed. It normally happens that mobs get slowed VERY quickly in a normal situation (like grouping with single pulls, soon as mob is in camp i cast balance and its slowed almost before the tank has control of it). But add(s) is not that situation and often i'm left with the choices of healing, slowing or attempting to root/vp with only time to do 1 of them. Having more hp on our pet would allow me a tad bit more time to control an add and slow before he's dead. As it stands now, dogdog gets 1 rounded and doesnt slow the mob down in any way and it's like I didnt even have him there.

Funi adds another point. Our pet dies so quickly and so often, some dont even bother summoning him. Ouch.

[HawklordXegony]

[Kianor]

[Vasei]

The discussion you're having is Class Balance. You can't say "we used to have this functionality and we don't have it now, so it should just happen". Nothing exists in a vacuum. I'm sure it's not going to surprise (egads, I hope not, maybe I shouldn't say that) anyone responsible for shaman balancing that our pet is so flimsy.

Maybe he's supposed to be.

When the beastlord class was created, the intent was for shamans that wanted THAT playstyle to just switch over. They are a true pet class. Their pet is intended to hold its own against a non-trivial mob. We are not a true pet class. That line has been drawn in the sand and we're not crossing over it unless we intend to give something up.

As for dogdog going unused, he's a situational spell. Just about ALL our spells are situational. Maybe you're not doing content where the dog makes sense?

Just for the record, I'm not anti-pet. I use him constantly. Increasing dog hps is just very low on my priority list. We have root and VP to hold things off while we slow. Only one of the true pet classes has that ability, and they also have arguably the weakest pet of the 3.

[Sowslow]

I try to keep the pet up as much as possible, but like others have said it is hard sometimes to keep him from dying so quickly. I wouldn't even mind if the pet turned in to something like the mage fire pet. In certain situations we would loose a panther target, but it might make up for it based on what type of spell it would cast. It could be the exact same dps just not from melee. Just a thought.

[Brohg]

[Catmandew]

Here is something totally outside the box for our pet. How about some sort of "Delay Death" AA that we can buy that will cause our pet to go dormant for some amount of time (5 ticks?) instead of dying and disappearing. After the time expires, the pet is back up and able to be used again.

Not sure how this would work, but trying to come up with some other mechanism that has not already been beat to death.