Wizards...

[Rocums]

So we fix wizards by nerfing everyone else?

Theres bound to be other ways around this.

Think of it more as fixing Melee. One or two more tiers and 2 handers would have been hard capped in damage.

[Rocums]

I agree with Moord, my wiz spams ether flame during raids, and goes OOM before a ToV named is at 50%. He is pretty much just a bonus dpser (and evac) right now, that's why I'm not even gonna gear him (he only takes items that NOBODY wants).

Though if you did have gear and AAs you would have a much bigger mana pool to work with, along with mana regen and mana cost reduction. My healers had mana problems until I solved then with gear and AAs.

[Tyler]

The plan i had for wizards was, that they do maybe (roughly) 1.5x of the top dps with their mana bar, then have to rest for 15 secs or so while they click mana orb etc.

Current parses of good geared and aa'd wizards to the rescue.

[moordian]

I don't envy your position here Tyler. Last night on Fennin we had a ranger parse in the neighbrhood of 4500 dps, then a monk and zerker well in to the 3000s. My monk with no disc and no flying kick parse right at 1500 dps. Keep in mind none of these numbers include proc damage, and surely everyone had Panther on.

[khaliss]

Though if you did have gear and AAs you would have a much bigger mana pool to work with, along with mana regen and mana cost reduction. My healers had mana problems until I solved then with gear and AAs.

I disagree, given all my alts had roughly the same AAs/gear at one point... the wiz still fell behind by a wide margin. This was mainly evident in long fights (raid targets, 2.0 dragons in WW, etc.)

Everyone (who played EQ for at least a month) knows that AAs, gear, and mana pool will considerably boost a caster's damage output, but right now (on this server) melee classes scale very well in the higher end (easy to figure out just by looking at the damage ratio on Tier2+ weapons), thus why wizzies aren't popular (including other cloth wearers).

[moordian]

The problem with wizards isn't so much mana pool as it is DPS. The only thing that a larger mana pool does is extend the amount of time you can produce DPS. Wizards are limited by the amount of total potential damage their spells can do when you consider foci and crit AA. Nothing else will increase DPS. You either have to decrease the cast time - which is not very practical since there is always a minimum 2.5 second recast delay, or you have to increase the amount of damage potentially done with each cast.

Right now, the absolute max possible DPS a wizard can do chain casting their best DPS nuke with 0% resists still does not measure up to melee DPS. Since wizards are mana limited, their potential DPS should be considerably higher than a melee's since the wizard will eventually go OOM. With rangers, zerkers, and monks parsing higher than it is even possible for a wizard to do, either melee need to be tuned down (this is what I would do for several reasons) or casters need to be tuned up dramatically.

Also it is important to keep in mind that this is assuming perfect conditions for the wizard. When you start taking in to account resists, partial resists, and having to cast concussion to keep agro manageable the actual DPS is considerably lower.

[khaliss]

My wiz chain casting Ether Flame (8K base damage) has no chance of stealing aggro from the tank, don't even need concussion. If there are too many changes to implement for fixing melee/physical damage (which might also require raid targets to have much LESSER hp to compensate for this adjustment), why not just place built-in spell-damage/spell-crit/lower-spell resist modifiers on caster items? Even my shammy's DOTs are way underpowered, at least he is a pretty good healer.

[moordian]

You have no shot at taking agro because the tank is doing more DPS. He also has hate mods on his armor and +hate or stun procs on his weapons. If you where doing the DPS you should be doing it would be much more of an issue. I have to work at keeping agro off Burt - look at the DPS he does, it's typically 3500ish. If your wizzy was doing 4000+ DPS you would have to cast concussion at least a couple times during a fight, especially early on before the tank has a good amount of hate built up.

[khaliss]

Yeah, I still remember agro mechanics (dps, agro procs, lifetaps, etc.) pretty well, now that I've been playing again. Just trying to echo what you have been pointing out. Wizzies (and nukers/casters in general) are way underpowered here and a re-balance is necessary to make them playable again. I remember on live how hard it was to maintain agro once wizards start giving it all they got (ie. chain critting, manaburn, etc.)

[Tyler]

A new spell will be available on the LDON vendors after reload - Chaotic Detonation, 300 pts.