I never said that we would lose mind blast casts.
Specifically, what I said was that we would lose a small amount of time in the specific case where we do not get a DI proc before the natural CD of MB is up after consuming the DI proc. (Which happens roughly 63% of the time if you get no SWP mastery procs, and if you don't have enough haste to push to 4 ticks in that period of time)
Getting SWP mastery procs and an extra tick in that amount of time means that the chance of having no proc goes down significantly. Even getting 1 extra tick (4 total ticks) reduces the chance to near 50%.
If we get a proc we don't lose any time at all.
I agree with you in that we need a buff to be brought up to other classes, rather than other classes being nerfed down to where we are.
@Felade & Right, arms races are bad I know, but I think its mostly intuitive when one class is clearly overperforming, and most are within a pretty tight range, and some are straggling behind - that you can buff the stragglers without it becoming an arms race so long as you don't buff everyone to match the one or three specs that is way to strong at a given time (nerf them perhaps).
Regarding bosses though, that's kind of my point - bosses don't complain about constant buffs/nerfs to their class - so if buffing a handful of classes to par causes bosses to get easier, buff bosses - also since bosses get buffs and developer time every tier - they are always being re-balanced around what's equal to the players anyways.
Edit: Brb rerolling Boss class, going to run Illidain / Yvaelle / Thrall in 3's (RPS) ^^
How final would you say the current build feels? Also are pre-made characters out yet?
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The current priest build? Should be close to final. I'd assume any buffing would be done by adjusting mastery co-efficients in a way that might alter spell priority, but not the core abilities we use.
Pre-made 85 characters are available and have been for some time now. I wouldn't expect level 90 characters any time soon, or possible ever. Blizzard's most recent blue post on the topic of pre-mades sounded like they weren't planning on making that a priority with the new gearing system in place. I think they'll also want people to test Jade Forest once the new version of that is live, and level 90 premades would make that difficult.
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I'm not sure if this has been mentioned yet, (I skimmed the thread, and didn't see anything) but it might be worth testing VE with Twist of Fate. IE, if the fight has extremely predictable damage (Ultraxion, Chimaeron), would popping VE proc Twisted Fate if it healed people who are below 20%? If so, that would greatly increase the value of the ability in any fight that you could manage to so.
Edit: Another small thing would be to use a range checker add on set to 25 yards, and get your tank just on the outer edge of it for Halo. Would be a lot easier than guessing.
Last edited by Teye; 2012-07-09 at 11:07 PM.
I actually assumed it did, but I didn't check - so I'll do that at some point (might have to be tomorrow though). The problem with twist of fate (as I put in the talent comparison of it) is that you actually need very very high uptime over the course of the fight to outweigh the alternatives (like...50% uptime). Even if you could get a VE heal as soon as it procced, didn't glyph it so it lasted 15 seconds instead of 10, and then kept the buff for the subsequent seconds - you might gain about 30 seconds out of it with VE heals every 3 minutes - but unless the fight also has a ton of executable adds spread out between the high raid damage / VE phases - it probably wouldn't be enough to outweigh the alternatives on something like a patchwerk or ultraxion style fight.
There will definitely be fights where Twist of Fate is the right call though, and I'll be sure to confirm it works off VE heals
Yeah it all just matters how many classes are behind or ahead. One ahead? Nerf that class. One or two behind? Buff that class. 5 or 6 ahead or behind? That depends on where the boss is tuned at - for the "ahead" classes or the "behind" classes. In general, they're probably more likely to nerf rather than buff in that situation because they'd have to re-tune bosses if all classes are suddenly ahead, whereas they just nerf so everyone's "behind (aka where they intended folks to be at)" they shouldn't have to fix the bosses.Right, arms races are bad I know, but I think its mostly intuitive when one class is clearly overperforming, and most are within a pretty tight range, and some are straggling behind - that you can buff the stragglers without it becoming an arms race so long as you don't buff everyone to match the one or three specs that is way to strong at a given time (nerf them perhaps).
Regarding bosses though, that's kind of my point - bosses don't complain about constant buffs/nerfs to their class - so if buffing a handful of classes to par causes bosses to get easier, buff bosses - also since bosses get buffs and developer time every tier - they are always being re-balanced around what's equal to the players anyways.
Edit: Brb rerolling Boss class, going to run Illidain / Yvaelle / Thrall in 3's (RPS) ^^
Its sort of like how secondary stats got out of control in Wrath - every tank was so good at avoiding damage, they had to make bosses hit really hard, and eventually they were forced to nerf all tanks across the board with chill of the throne.
I don't know if "intuitive" would be the right word. Players can feel a lot of things, but it doesn't mean much. I may feel like Warriors are overpowered, but I only have one or two reference points (our mainspec DPS warrior) so I'm not really in a good place to make that call. Blizzard has access to all that data and then some, and can actually go in mathematically and answer that kind of question much more objectively (but they still don't have the clear cut answer, mostly because they can't control for skill or odd strategies). In the end, what really is the final line on the buff/nerf rollercoaster is when you start seeing specific specs/classes being dropped from raids across wide swaths of the community (like when we saw guilds dumping druids/warriors/paladins for DKs around Sath+3D). There may not be a difference that shows up in their data, but for whatever reason (maybe the OP class is just easier to play or to play at a high level, or whatever) there's enough of a practical issue that raiders are acting on it.
Last edited by Felade; 2012-07-10 at 02:56 AM.
Thanks for the information. We fixed it yesterday, here: code.google.com/p/simulationcraft/source/detail?r=12767
Unfortunately that just means Shadow DPS is further down. Even though Warlock looks a little bit overpowered, priests are a bit on the low side. They really should just double the mastery coefficient, which would solve some gearing problems as well.
And a new release 501-9 is out.
Last edited by Caltiom; 2012-07-11 at 06:07 AM.
Talents etc all seem pretty finalised. The only major thing I think they'll change is reducing the damage of Devouring Plague and increasing the damage of VT and SW:P, possibly just through buffing Mastery. Devouring Plague will be way too strong in PvP, as a 3-orb Crit would take out half of someone's health pool.
I guess they want our DoTs fairly weak to help the Multi-dotting balance issue, which could lead to them changing our Mastery entirely again, since making the current Mastery a decent stat would involve buffing our DoTs.
As you said yourself, they do want to keep dot damage low to keep multidotting in place. The problem is if you nerf VT/SW:P/DP damage, that damage has to go somewhere. Mindblast is already hard hitting, SW is already hard hitting, leaves MF as the only option. If they have to buff MF, then Mindspike will be obsolete, so will be FDCL with it.
If at all, they might give us the Haunt/Malefic Grasp treatment, we even have to perfect fit spells for that. MB as Haunt, and MF as Grasp. (yay for homogenization)
And changing mastery again: To what? Increase direct damage?(doesn't work) Increase DoT Damage? (doesn't work) Or Ignite? (might work, but it's the firemage mastery). And then, if shadowpriests damage is already lower than the damage of other classes, buffing mastery value might be enough to bring us up par.
Yep, saw that yesterday. Thanks for the update!We fixed it yesterday, here: code.google.com/p/simulationcraft/source/detail?r=12767
They could just buff MF/MB damage a little each, similar to how they done the 12% nerf/buff to DoTs/directs a little while ago.
But yeah, just buffing MF, MB or SW:D themselves wouldn't work great.
Last edited by mmoc7c5925fb1b; 2012-07-12 at 01:36 AM.
I think we can expect to see some large balance changes in the next beta patch, based on what the blue posters have been discussing. This will really be their first big balance sweep of the classes since the real raid testing has been done.
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Hmmm, I'll redo the Insanity bit I guess but based on my thoughts in the insanity change thread, I don't think the current Insanity version will end up being the live version either - maybe - but it will probably shift one more time. Still waiting for the dot buff / dp nerf patch as well, its a tad disconcerting they think they are at 5.0.3 now... maybe DP will go live? (Everyone find someone to play shadow/affliction/tree with for free glad?
Hey, the last build brought a bunch of changes. Addons are now available.
It would seem that at long last bonus DoT tics from Shadowy Recall are now procing our Talents as they should.
Here is a SS of DI procing off both a normal SW:P tic and a Bonus tic at the same time.
It is also worth noting that Shadowy Recall procs do not seem to be considered periodic damage.
SW:Insanity is has also been changed:After a bit of testing i noticed the 6 second mentioned in the tool tip is a bit misleading, it will be come available to cast after the 3rd to last tic, or when there are 2 tics remaining. Ideal use would seem to be as soon as the 2nd to last tic of SW:P occurs to minimize SW:P down time.7500 Mana
Consumes your Shadow Word: Pain to deal (2,728 + 260.0% of SP) Shadow damage to the target. Only usable while Shadow Word: Pain has less than 6.000 sec remaining.
In the free PvP gear SW:I was hitting for about ~73k. Subtracting the damage lost from 1 SW:P tic (~9k damage) and 2 GCDs or 1 Mind Flay (~45k Damage) leaves its net damage at about ~20k. Since it is only cast every 15 seconds or so, that is leaves at a ~1300 DPS (single target) boost.
Needless to say, having SW:P on multiple targets will increase damage from SW:I by quite a bit.
As it stands, Mind Bender is still looking like the clear winner in a long single target fight. Personally, i have never really liked the idea behind SW:I very much any way.
Edit: Some of the numbers were a bit off as i was missing Inner Fire/Shadowform. Had to fix it.
Last edited by DarkSavior; 2012-07-15 at 07:02 AM.
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