We are not nerfing support conjurers

[ieti]

Actually in today's state conjurer can not keep alive even 2-3 ppl. In pre 1.0 good conjurers was able to fully support 6-10 ppl. By fully support i mean heal in time and do not get people die if badly targeted, give mana to who needs, dispell...etc etc etc.

Today's state is sad and definitely not fun compared to pre 1.0. This wonderful class lost his fluid and fast placed gameplay. Lost his mana balance, and lost his survival(some call it tanking). As highly targeted class conjurer must tank and be hard to kill. Now the case is not this.

I hope with return of supportive knights things to go better.

I still think 6-8-10 ppl is reasonable number of allies conjurer can full support. This is actually 1 party. Before it was possible to do so. Now i do not think it is possible - if conjurer is alone with that number of allies he is out of mana too fast and can not do his job properly.

Conjurer have to be enought to support 1 party and self. This must be included in conjurer balance estimations.

Chilko i think you can gather good information of gameplay if you can place some log on key players of different classes across servers. This way you can see what spells are used, how and what they achieve by this. Maybe it will give ideas of what can be made better, fixed, adjusted etc etc etc.

[Duplo]

My pleasure as support conjurer is helping people and sometimes charge ennemies. I love charging syrtis on pp2 bridge with 2 warlock (Chapela, Dartz...) and some other barbarian protecting them with mana pylon and greather healing and blessing them. When I do that I'm very vulnerable, I cannnot defend myself (due to my skills), no heal self I prefer spending point on bless (and bless weapon), Divine intervention, Dispell (and mass dispell), some on mana tree than supporting myself.

With the "new" Greather Healing, well I will no more go with them, some marksann (or hunter) make me more than 400 normal hit, without heal I will no stay alive long time.

I'm agree that greather healing could be too powerfull, but not alone. With 3 conjurer that have it active, 120 health/sec is a little too much. But when you are the only one support conjurer (most of case regrettably) that 10 people ask you healt (vida) or mana, grather healing is the only way to give a little to everyone.
I still can do with your new spell but few player that need mana think to move next to a mage with mana communion; few player almost dead think to go next to conjurer with greather healing. Do you really think player that need too be healed will wait next to a mage hoping he is a conjurer and will cast greather healing? Of course no...

You want greather healing be less powerful, just make it not combinable (I mean 3 time greather healing= 40 health/sec no more 120); make that the spell do not work through wall and gate, forcing conjurer to go outside fort...
But let the spell heal people that come near us to be healed, and give us health also.

Originally Posted by chilko

one conjurer was able to take care of groups of 50 users and had broken spells like protection dome covering 100% of everything because of a bug.
Our objective is to have more support conjurers.

When I'm the only one conjurer, I can survive if I use mumble to send warrior to kill the hunter that just confuse me. If I don't have grather healing on, I don't survive 20 sec...
I learned with some valhalla when hunting together to cast greather healing at the begining of the second fight, when the enemy know you are the conjurer. So I still heal people, and sometime it give a little more time to warrior to kill the hunter or the pet if the hunter wait behind a rock.

Originally Posted by chilko

We believe that the lack of support conjurers is because of some possible summon + heavy defence configurations that you guys call Warjurers.
Warjurers are more attractive because they have all of the defense benefits of the conjurers + a completely unbalanced and broken summon discipline

I don't see any of these spell modified in the current state of the modification there. Nerf the mental tree, nerf the summon tree, nerf the Staff Mastery tree and the sorcery, I don't care as support conjurer I have:

Mental : lvl 3
Mana Control : lvl 19
- Energy Borrow (2)
- Ambitious Sacrifice (3)
- Mana Pool (5)
- Mana Pylon (5)
Enchentments : lvl 19
- Bless (5)
- Bless Weapon (5)
- Dispel Magic (5)
- Mass Dispel Magic (5)
Soin : lvl 19
- Heal Self (3)
- Heal Ally (5)
- Resurrect (5)
- Regenerate Self (2)
- Regenerate Ally (5)
- Divine Intervention (5)
- Greater Healing (5)
Sorcery : lvl 19
Summon : lvl 3

Originally Posted by chilko

Our idea is that people will need more specialization (so only attack or only support conju will be available) and we will also offer some cool skills to the ones choosing the support path.

With this configuration I think you cannot say I'm not a only support conjurer. I even cannot survive alone I can cast 3 spell level 1 while confused [Arcane Missile - Beetle Swarm - Mana Burn ]... I support OTHER player (et pourtant ils me tapent sur les nerfs parfois).
I don't see how your proposition on greather healing will offer me a "cool skills"? Can someone explain me that?

Finally, if you decide to kill greather healing (I don't see that like a nerf it worst that nerfing), can you give me the url of a good tutorial to become warjurer and the name of someone that could learn me to play like a warjurer on alsius Ra (sorry but I want to have fun, I will no more play lys Borda as support conjurer with so great spell)?

[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.

[Galdomir]

Originally Posted by chilko

and we will also offer some cool skills to the ones choosing the support path

Oh yeah!

I agree that a support conjurer must have benefits. Giving more skills to support conjurers is an excellent idea. Good work

Chilko, you should post this in the spanish forum too

Regards!

[Gourmandine]

Originally Posted by Duplo

Nerf the mental tree, nerf the summon tree, nerf the Staff Mastery tree and the sorcery, I don't care as support conjurer I have:[...]

It's true it won't hurt conjurer who play support, but it means we'll no more have fun in arena (a place where I go with friends when I need a break in supporting or when wz is empty). With no mental skills, we will no more be able to fight in this place. I don't care if summon or staff mastery are nerfed as I don't use them in arena (I don't see where is the fun in asking a bot to kill my opponent, it's not what I call playing), but imo summon is needed for grinding as you can't force conjurer to grind in support mode (you don't always have enough people to grind with). If you want to nerf it, just make summons unable to attack players.