All of the wizard nerfs that hit today are complete garbage.

That's all I have to say right now.

~ Methais

>Let's try and be constructive with any criticism or comments towards any of the new changes.

There's nothing to be constructive about because it's exactly the same garbage (fact) as the previous proposals, with all of the same bolt issues still in place.

Congratulations on making the game less fun.

Training in Elemental Lore, Water, has a seed 1 summation (based upon ranks) % chance to cause pitchforks and RAGE.

> "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror...

You forgot the best part of that quote. I will finish it for you since I am a gentleman. " and were suddenly silenced"

So I've done some testing... here are my initial findings with 202 air lore:

The changes effectively remove the mana efficiency of using 901. On average it takes me 20 casts of 901 to take down a rift crawler. 6 casts of 903. 7 casts of 904. 11 casts of 906. 910 takes about 4 casts.
As stated above, the costs to take down a rift crawler becomes approximately 20/18/28/66/40 mana and 20/6/7/11/4 RT respectively.

Then if you try to use the rapidfire spell while on cooldown, that's effectively 120/48/63/121/60 mana respectively, making it effectively unusable during cooldown.

As you can see wizard bolt spells aren't particularly powerful, the DFs are weak, costs are high, and aren't particularly effective even with the air lore DF boost for 901/910.


I, however, have been able to kill crawlers in 1-4 shots with a bow with maximum skill/enhancives (lots of death crits resulting in some quick one hit deaths).
So that works out to be 1-4 rt, basically negligible mana cost to cast celerity, and no cooldown.
It seems being a war mage is much better than bolting now.
The caveat is that you have to be able to hit things with your 471 maximized bolt AS. Some crawlers just have excessively high DS regardless of the fact they're in offensive stance and wear no spells. Fetish masters have ~480+ ranged DS in offensive/prone so trying to hit them would be pointless.
Furthermore anything using a shield is basically a lost cause as well since critters tend to be fully trained to use shields. That ends up being something like 303 shield ranks + tower shield versus the 101 ranged ranks. Fallen crusaders come to mind as they tend to block 3-4 of my shots consecutively like Captain America or something. I cannot hit any vvrael warlocks that use tower shields as they basically hit 600 ranged DS with a tower shield.

So where does that put wizards all-in-all? For war mages, haste adds no change to how they hunted before as haste effectively adds no changes to offensive actions. For defensive purposes, 535 is much weaker as even 5 rt turns into 2 rt when before 8 rt turned into 1rt. Bolting without rapid fire is much weaker. Bolting in general isn't very effective. I have death critted a few cerebralites using 512 on the first cast so that looks promising. 519 without the lore training is costly and rarely death crits.

Hey Konakon! Glad to see you are still alive and kicking!

>> Finally, the spell will no longer automatically prepare the same spell again

This is the main reason I never bothered to use this spell very much in the past and I'm excited to see this particular change made!

I expect I am in the minority here, but I will probably use this spell more as a result of this update.

Also, for those wondering, the new spell has a duration of 60 seconds and does not stack (you get a message that it doesn't work if you try to recast it a 2nd time while it is still active).

Thanks!

-- Robert

Bazzelwyn says, "Maul maul maul maul maul maul maul."
Bazzelwyn says, "The answer is maul."

I found it the opposite. The most tedious 2nd floor Nelemar hunt ever. It's like someone went out of the way to encourage script hunting with adding excessively complicated commands and usage scenarios.

More tedium, less fun for total less power = no fun.

>Methais, the 14 minutes since these were posted and implemented gives a good indication you didn't try them.

It doesn't take rocket appliances to read the changes and see that it's an incredible loss in power from what we were before today.

~ Methais

An increase in duration would go a long way on this one. How about a 3 minute duration since there is a 3 minute recovery period?

>One query I heard on LNet was if Rapid Fire is now self-cast only. The announcement does not specify an answer to this.

>Rapid Fire is not restricted to self-cast: it can be cast on other characters and uses the target's skill to determine the cooldown. -Wiki

Estild did the basic information wiki edits on 515 (and 519)

https://gswiki.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Rapid_Fire_(515)

CORRECTION:

lol, brought to my attention that it's 319...not 335.

But i'm still standing behind my previous remarks.

Hap

>0 second castRT should have never been possible (and never will be again on any persistent basis)

I can almost feel the delight you take in reminding us of that.

>It is absolutely possible to hunt without the spell

Go try it in a place like the confluence against more than a 1 vs 1 fight where everything is unaffected by aoe crowd control spells, immune to single target disablers other than immolate on the stuff that isn't fire immune, which is about half the critters there, and are constantly dispelling and throwing maneuvers at you, and not being able to kill quickly is going to result in death. And since they don't crit, you have to do it by pure attrition which requires damage output that we're simply not capable of in the timeframe it's needed.

Know what else it's possible to do? Hunt a square 0 to cap with a non-ambushing sword & board build.

On another note, what's the point of the 0 RT procs? Without either a script, mindlessly mashing the enter key, or Spider Man reflexes, it's impossible to take advantage of it, which makes it useless unless encouraging scripting is the desired effect.

What's the chance that proc could be changed to something more useful, something like a double cast, duration extension, etc.?

~ Methais

>I feel you on the proc, and I plan on bringing this point up. I highly doubt it's going to end up as some kind of double cast, but I think there are other options to explore. As to the chances that it will actually change, I don't know. -Konacon

Double cast was just an example off the top of my head. But either way as it stands, the 0 RT proc just feels like a slap in the face being included with the RF nerf, because it's literally impossible to get any use out of without scripting or mashing.

Even replacing it with 0 mana cost for that cast would be way better than the current proc, because at least we can make use of it. The only way I can see a 0 RT proc being useful is to make it last 1 second instead of 1 cast, which I doubt any GMs would go for.

I would have much rather seen Rapid Fire become Burst Fire over what it is now, but I'm not even gonna waste time on a lost cause like that.

But I do appreciate you planning on bringing it up regardless.

~ Methais

>I feel you on the proc, and I plan on bringing this point up. I highly doubt it's going to end up as some kind of double cast, but I think there are other options to explore. As to the chances that it will actually change, I don't know.

Be nice to follow along with the MjS circle on that as with 240. Though I'd hate to even touch 540, but maybe it could be added to it - temporal change in time and space allows for a double/triple cast of a spell...

The cooldown needs to be able to be eliminated via training well enough post-cap. What's absurd, is the fact that the biggest issue with this spell, just like old Haste, was that it can STILL be cast on other players. Know who can afford the extra 5 mana per cast in the cooldown period? Those sorcerers spamming 702 in warcamps. Know who can't afford them? Wizards, especially unattuned ones who can't make use of 502 or 415 because of the presence of the lightning flare chance in water hunting grounds.

You should have eliminated the other cast ability and lessened the nerfing for the class that primarily bolts, since we have no effective warding spells or CS-based mass disablers or boosters accessible that spiritualists enjoy. Even other spells such as 215, 307, 219 all require the cleric or empath to be present instead of just casting from a place of safety and letting the sorcerer pop into a warcamp.

>As to that point itself, while there are other cooldowns which cannot be 100% removed post-cap, I would point out there's always maxing Harness Power training, which isn't vastly different than mitigating the cooldown directly...

All of my magical skills are fully maxed, thanks, so basically I lost power for nothing in return. Which in itself is bad enough, but the main issue is wizards are the only class that can't instantly kill something any more with sufficient skills and gear post-cap.

Going back to my original point, rapid fire should be self-cast only before adding in all of these other excessive cooldowns and mana penalty nerfs. At the minimum, a wizard should be present for the spell to take effect on others if an other cast version is available, similar to how 211, 215, and 219 work with lores. It's absurd that a major circle spell is so readily available when that was one of the big problems with it.

Also, this spell should be refreshable similar to how 506 now is. A CT nerf, plus a cooldown, plus non-refreshable, PLUS mana penalty is serious overkill when the biggest offenders of the spell are non-wizards abusing it for low mana costs. Non-wizards should only be able to cast defensive or utility spells at best while under this effect if we're balancing combat mechanics.

Since the Elemental Lore, Air benefit of a chance to flare a 0 second castRT appears to be unpopular, what other ideas would you suggest? Ideally, something useful and unique, as we're not looking to reimplement acuity or ensorcell (+AS/CS) flares here.

GameMaster Estild

Whoops, I totally misread what you were asking about. Sorry. My statement still stands however.

Droit

---

Speaking to you, Ceyrin asks, "Do you spontaneously come back to life when you die?"
Speaking to you, Ceyrin says, "Because I do."
You say, "Yes. I have a condition called Annoraxia.""

Auto applying a 502 cast either before or after.
0 mana cost on next spell cast.
Automatically cast a 'minor' version of a bolt spell of the same element as what was cast.
Double cast.
Double sampled d100 roll (reverse 1006).
Extra elemental flares of the associated element cast.
Apply the channeled spell effect for bolts (and immolate) without having to actually channel.
Free casts of the same spell at secondary hostile targets in the room.
Increased effectiveness of lore based effects (either static lore bonus, or by proc)

Taluric.