No MORE CRIT FW?!

[shadowsaun]

As of U8, you will simply use Ice Storm instead, which does double the damage of a firewall (Half of it bludgeoning and not susceptible to resists) at half the duration.

Same burst as a crit firewall, same damage per cast.

Falling, the sky is not.

Falling the ice storm will be...failing the fire wall will be

[gurgar78]

Falling the ice storm will be...failing the fire wall will be

Partially true. You'll still use Firewall against undead.

[Missing_Minds]

Partially true. You'll still use Firewall against undead.

blackbones.

[gurgar78]

blackbones.

Is it really necessary to point out the one exception? I'm moderately sure most people know that blackbones are immune to fire and those who don't will figure it out rather quickly.

[Missing_Minds]

Is it really necessary to point out the one exception? I'm moderately sure most people know that blackbones are immune to fire and those who don't will figure it out rather quickly.

The one exception that shows up in several quests? Yes. Considering I don't recall any blackbone zombies.

Now if you wanted to state undead that are very susceptible to fire damage (aka mummies, frost skeletons, etc.) then yes you want to use a WoF.

Has any one done any tests on wraiths and shadows? Aka the phase shifters to see which will work better? I wonder due to hit/tick detection.

[gurgar78]

The one exception that shows up in several quests? Yes. Considering I don't recall any blackbone zombies.

Now if you wanted to state undead that are very susceptible to fire damage (aka mummies, frost skeletons, etc.) then yes you want to use a WoF.

Has any one done any tests on wraiths and shadows? Aka the phase shifters to see which will work better? I wonder due to hit/tick detection.

Vulnerable to fire or not, undead take double damage from Wall of Fire. It's a spell-specific modifier, hence the general statement that you still want to use WoF for undead. I, and most people, will know that blackbone skeletons, where ever they appear, will be immune to fire damage and, thus, using wall of fire on them is... less than optimal.

I suppose I can appreciate the desire for full disclosure as there may be newer players who can get confused, although I still maintain that as soon as someone sees "Immune" with the little fire symbol pop over a blackbone skelly's head, they will rather quickly figure out that wall of fire is not the best choice.

[Cartheron]

Well, when they first told they will change the way crits are being handled, I was in process of leveling my Arcane and at first I thought it was an improvement. You know, you don't have time to crit-fish because mobs just die. Or you are in Amrath, where it doesn't work at all. Then I got to 20 and started running epics with my guild. We have a bit more healers and not many melees, so I had to learn how to crit-fish pretty fast. Because when you take in account mobs' resitance your normal 70damage/tick isn't gonna cut it. You might as well not bother cast it, as even as a weak arcane you will do better DPS when you just Mass hold the monsters and start hitting them with a stick (Dreamspitter).
And then I for example started soloing Claw for my guild (I solo it, others pike, that's the standard way of doing it I guess). As I'm not a skilled player at all, I sometimes get that nice message: "Guardian has spotted you". And what now? Necromancy isn't working, Enchantment isn't working, so it's back to my old good FW. So you click on Earthdweller, cast FW and, well, nothing happens, because healing scorpions heal through it without any problems. My solution is to just crit-fish and in meantime invis myself so that I'm not stunned. After change, what am I supposed to do? You want to tell me that moderately skilled and played 20lvl arcane just can't get past 5 mobs with full mana bar? Of course, leet player will just never have to fight the guardian, or will just Cone of Cold and DBF and non-crit FW all those pesky scorpions.
If you could get the highest tick for the stacked FWs, then it would be best I guess - usefull for leveling and in epics - you just recast FW 5 times and will do meaningfull damage - less random in this way which is definitely a win.

Now its even better - you will cast Ice storm (as previous posters indicated) AND a firewall next to it, scorpions will take much higher damage per second that they used to inside crit fw and will die even faster. In general, as long as ice storm will not be nerfed to the ground, arcane dps will improve in this update and in the same time they will save alot of mana they used to use on crit fishing. Just go and check it, its true

[Gunga]

Or when you're being a perching dweeb instead of kiting mobs through your firewalls like a good caster.

Smaller circles please, noob.

[Chai]

Now its even better - you will cast Ice storm (as previous posters indicated) AND a firewall next to it, scorpions will take much higher damage per second that they used to inside crit fw and will die even faster. In general, as long as ice storm will not be nerfed to the ground, arcane dps will improve in this update and in the same time they will save alot of mana they used to use on crit fishing. Just go and check it, its true

Not only this, but theres now a persistent AOE that works on amrath content.

[Harncw]

My confusion is this:

Recently they changed the Radiant servant aura to determine critical only 1 time when it was cast, thus making it work like firewall did.

Now they are changing firewall to determine critical on each "tick", thus making it work the way Radiant servant aura originally did.

I assumed the change to radiant servant aura was for system performance, only calculate critical once for life of AoE. Are we sliding backwards? Is this going to cause more server lag is there an increases load from computing criticals on each mob for each tick?

Do we need need to equip lore/potency items for the entire life of the AoE spell?

Heres hoping my post makes any sense...

[maddmatt70]

I do not know if not having crit firewalls is a good change. My reason for saying this is I know that some players really like the crits. They make a point of saying crit firewall in mic like it is the best thing since sliced bread lol. I do not know if it is the gambler in people, but some people definitely like this. The other side of the coin is without crits mob hp is probably easier to balance for devs. Anyway not sure how I feel on this subject.

[Khellendros13]

Just been confirmed by Genasi that Ice Storm will get a damage nerf...



Quote:
Originally Posted by Genasi
Truth is, the spell is not supposed to be doing that extra damage. As Recared mentions here, the tooltip information does not match the amount of damage being done; the spell is not functioning as intended. It's doing about twice the intended amount of damage. Don't worry, we'll be keeping it persistent as it currently is, but we'll be fixing the damage accordingly.

I'd be interested in hearing how people will feel about the spell's viability once the damage is reduced. We still want it to be a competitive option when compared to Wall of Fire.



Sorcerers rejoice, you wont have to worry about fitting this in.

I will be happy if it retains 3/4 of the current damage at least...if they reduce it to half, then extend better work on it.