We are not nerfing support conjurers

[Mr_Egg]

Originally Posted by chilko

We are not trying to nerf conjurers.

But I'd say that what has happened to GH (from what I've seen on Amun) is in itself a nerf, because all of a sudden it limits what a conjurer can do. My favourite use of GH is to set it up, throw up mind blank, steel skin and energy barrier, and go and stand outside while the warriors are areaing, to give them just a little extra help, and to give one more target to the attacking realm, who is more likely to resist a knock/stun and be able to get back in, and so having wasted a little of their time (doesn't always work, sometimes I'm an idiot ). And then on top of that, you can run into an area of MoD with GH on, but wouldn't be able to fire it off in there. I don't know whether DI cancels out MoD, but sometimes it's hard to get a DI even as a support conjurer. And my other main reason that I think GH should stay as an aura is that it tells you who is hurt. If you play enough, you can put a name to a player (and so know what they look like), and as soon as you see a name come up in the log as being affected by GH, you know they're being targetted, and so can give them more support (heals, regens, mana, dispel, etc). If it's about the server coping with processing stuff, GH should be the last aura to be changed, because it's most useful as an aura.

But, I'll leave it there because this isn't a GH discussion thread.

I think the simplest way to increase the number of support conjurers in the warzone, is to give grind support conjurers more experience. As it is, the vast majority of conjurers that get to 50 do it off a warju setup (personally I used a hybrid setup for most of it, but that's irrelevant), and so when they get to the warzone.... warju sort of comes more naturally as they've had practice. If it becomes more appealing to grind in support mode, then when they get to 50, support will come more naturally, and there'll be less warjus around.

And yes, other people are right that most find it more fun to kill, but I actually get less frustrated from playing conj than I do by long resist chains on my lock, so it's more fun to me. That's not to say it's not frustrating though... the mana "demands" from a lot of players, and when cremation overrides resurrection even though the player is up off the ground, and when the heal goes through half a second too late so the player still dies, and when confuse or darkness (usually followed by sadistic servants and mana burn) hits forcing you to sit out, and when you can't reach the res/heal from the wall, so someone else dies, and when a barb/kinght/hunter gets all the way through the war group and kills you before anyone even notices..... are all still frustrating, although many of those are player issues, and could be solved by better teamplay.

In terms of changes? Here's what I would suggest:

• Make the staff mastery magnification spells non-stackable (although then they would need to go up in increments, so fire does 5/10/15/20/25, ice does 7/14/21/28/35, lightning does 10/20/30/40/50), because this straight away reduces the maximum damage from normals.
• Switch mana communion with metabolic control in the mana tree and make it an area spell (instead of an aura), so say, mana cost goes up like 300/400/500/600/700, and everyone within radius 10 (maybe?) receives 100/150/200/250/300 mana. Numbers might need reworking, but they're only there as an example.
• Reduce the range of summons (zarkits) to 20
• Like Ise said, don't automatically put the conjurer into attack mode after every spell (small issue, but it is a bit weird)
• Increase range of heal ally to 25
• MORE EXPERIENCE FROM GRINDING AS A SUPPORT CONJURER! (maybe double the current amount)

Other than reducing mana cost (I wouldn't know which spells are the expensive ones (apart from mana pylon), I just know that I run out quite a lot, even with ambitious sacrifice), I think those changes are enough to increase the number of support conjurers, without making them overpowered. Even just doing a couple of these things would be a great help...

[doppelapfel]

Nerfing warjus wont help, those will maybe create another char or quit the game but they wont start healing.

[_Arwen_]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned this before so I'll have a go at it.

Chilko, really glad to hear that you guys are considering a pure support conjurer, IMO this is the way to go. HOWEVER, before you go and implement this, you must fix the formula that decides how much XP a support conjurer gets in a grind party!!!

Not only that, but you must fix how necro is burnt as it takes a support conjurer ages to burn off even just 1%.

If you don't fix the XP formula for conjurers and you implement this change, anyone choosing pure support will quickly realize their mistake and depending on how you implement it, either reskill back to warjur or quit the game because they can't reskill away from support.

Again, I really love the idea you have here, please continue to involve the community in the creation of new skills for the support Conjurer.

[Edit]
Ah, eggy mentioned it. I'll leave this as a reinforcement post. +1 eggy

[Jippy]

"Again, I really love the idea you have here, please continue to involve the community in the creation of new skills for the support Conjurer."

This kida off-post but, I REALLY REALLY LIKE THAT NGD IS INVOLVING ITS COSTUMERS ABOUT THE CHANGES BEFORE THEY ARE MADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

+1 NGD - keep it up, u can never over communicate...

[save_the_trees]

I'm really looking forward to the changes you are going to make. Could you have a look into the following few problems for support conjurers when you redesign the power book?

1) Two very important abilities are located in trees which are, apart from those two abilities, filled with stuff that nobody needs.
Since the nerfs of protection dome a long time ago, the only spell useful for a support conju in staff mastery ist mana communion, yet usually you have to take it, since warlocks certainly won't do that. And from point of mana management, it isn't even worth using for the conjurer himself.
The other spell I'm talking about, is dispell magic / mass dispell. If you choose to max out healing and use key defensive abilities, you are left with enough points to either use lvl3 dispell + mana communion (like I do), or lvl 5 dispell/ mass dispell and no mana communion (like somebody who posted here before me) or maybe also no dispell and lvl 5 mana mana communion.
So currently, after maxing out healing / dmg mitigation and using key survival abilities all you get for a hell lot of points is some very ineffective stuff, ....

possible solutions:
a) move some spells either one of the two into mana tree or maybe move the two into the same tree.
b) make protection dome worth using again .... maybe old effect but only for
3 players or sth like that ...
c) increase the effectiveness of those two spells .... maybe less mana cost for mana communion / some % dmg reduction for a few seconds after somebody got dispelled

2) I think support conjurer is not only about healing but about cc or anti cc to buy some more time. Currently it is still possible to do something like that, but various abilities have become almost useless. Tremor range was reduced to 25 a long time ago while warlocks gained the ability to use a range 30 staff + arcane projection to extend terror range towards infinity .... I don't care about the tremor duration, it could be as low as 3s, but I want a good chance to prevent the terror ... or at least do SOMETHING .... This is just an example and imo there a quite a few situations currently where you can't do anything. It doesn't matter how this is solved, it can be achieved by changing conjurer abilities or by changing other abilities or a mixture of it, but simply not being able to do anything in 50% of all cases where you really want to avoid a certain situation just sucks.

3) sanctuary.... I guess I don't even need to say anything on this topic ... just ask any conjurer .... I don't want to be impolite, but I always wondered what developers where smoking, when they made those changes back then ... cast time + almost 0 duration ... then you could as well completely remove it.

[doppelapfel]

Originally Posted by save_the_trees

I'm really looking forward to the changes you are going to make. Could you have a look into the following few problems for support conjurers when you redesign the power book?

1) Two very important abilities are located in trees which are, apart from those two abilities, filled with stuff that nobody needs.
Since the nerfs of protection dome a long time ago, the only spell useful for a support conju in staff mastery ist mana communion, yet usually you have to take it, since warlocks certainly won't do that. And from point of mana management, it isn't even worth using for the conjurer himself.
The other spell I'm talking about, is dispell magic / mass dispell. If you choose to max out healing and use key defensive abilities, you are left with enough points to either use lvl3 dispell + mana communion (like I do), or lvl 5 dispell/ mass dispell and no mana communion (like somebody who posted here before me) or maybe also no dispell and lvl 5 mana mana communion.
So currently, after maxing out healing / dmg mitigation and using key survival abilities all you get for a hell lot of points is some very ineffective stuff, ....

possible solutions:
a) move some spells either one of the two into mana tree or maybe move the two into the same tree.
b) make protection dome worth using again .... maybe old effect but only for
3 players or sth like that ...
c) increase the effectiveness of those two spells .... maybe less mana cost for mana communion / some % dmg reduction for a few seconds after somebody got dispelled

2) I think support conjurer is not only about healing but about cc or anti cc to buy some more time. Currently it is still possible to do something like that, but various abilities have become almost useless. Tremor range was reduced to 25 a long time ago while warlocks gained the ability to use a range 30 staff + arcane projection to extend terror range towards infinity .... I don't care about the tremor duration, it could be as low as 3s, but I want a good chance to prevent the terror ... or at least do SOMETHING .... This is just an example and imo there a quite a few situations currently where you can't do anything. It doesn't matter how this is solved, it can be achieved by changing conjurer abilities or by changing other abilities or a mixture of it, but simply not being able to do anything in 50% of all cases where you really want to avoid a certain situation just sucks.

3) sanctuary.... I guess I don't even need to say anything on this topic ... just ask any conjurer .... I don't want to be impolite, but I always wondered what developers where smoking, when they made those changes back then ... cast time + almost 0 duration ... then you could as well completely remove it.

I dont agree with moving the spells, it should not be possible to have the perfect build with every skill you like, everyone no matter the class has to decide which skills he needs and which might be also good but can be left out, fe id like to have dispel, max cs, terror, mod, tm and twister on my lock but thats not possible. Some Conjus have mass dispell, others mc, thats the way it is.
Id like to see more usefull spells in the stafftree.

[chilko]

Originally Posted by _Arwen_

I'm surprised no one's mentioned this before so I'll have a go at it.

Chilko, really glad to hear that you guys are considering a pure support conjurer, IMO this is the way to go. HOWEVER, before you go and implement this, you must fix the formula that decides how much XP a support conjurer gets in a grind party!!!

Not only that, but you must fix how necro is burnt as it takes a support conjurer ages to burn off even just 1%.

If you don't fix the XP formula for conjurers and you implement this change, anyone choosing pure support will quickly realize their mistake and depending on how you implement it, either reskill back to warjur or quit the game because they can't reskill away from support.

Again, I really love the idea you have here, please continue to involve the community in the creation of new skills for the support Conjurer.

[Edit]
Ah, eggy mentioned it. I'll leave this as a reinforcement post. +1 eggy

we will fix this of course.
The system is too complex and has two diferent implementations running at the same time.

It's tricky to fix without breaking everything else.

[Klutu]

Originally Posted by chilko

we will fix this of course.
The system is too complex and has two diferent implementations running at the same time.

It's tricky to fix without breaking everything else.

Why not allow a fixed amount of Exp per lvl for the conj for supporting & move Ambitious to a lower part of the mana tree

this means a lvl 45 could support a lvl 10 and get good exp - which would also help increase server numbers & help keep new players

[Mbwana]

Originally Posted by Klutu

Why not allow a fixed amount of Exp per lvl for the conj for supporting & move Ambitious to a lower part of the mana tree

this means a lvl 45 could support a lvl 10 and get good exp - which would also help increase server numbers & help keep new players

I gotta say I love this idea (or rather giving fixed exp for support grinding)

to grind I have to go around with a summon (since supporting others does not always give me exp unless I spam auras or bless) so when I want a break and war afterwards I have to run back to birka or hopstad to reskill for support

this is a pain as I have no mount, thus I end up not bothering to reskill at all
result: warring in warju set up

but with this I think I can safely move around in a support set up, help grind while recieving solid exp AND war afterwards without running back and forth between inner and the wz to reskill

[doppelapfel]

Originally Posted by Klutu

Why not allow a fixed amount of Exp per lvl for the conj for supporting & move Ambitious to a lower part of the mana tree

this means a lvl 45 could support a lvl 10 and get good exp - which would also help increase server numbers & help keep new players

Really great idea!