Wings wings wings: A Discussion

[gloopygloop]

As of right now, wings are a 28% stacking striding boost, and (combined with DoTs, shoulder cannon summons, and possibly the FvS capstone searing light) boss /win buttons.

Since Turbine seems to think that the kiting portion of that /win equation is the problem, I wonder how long it will be before we see Sprint Boost, and Barbarian and Monk run speeds smacked with the nerf bat.

[teh_meh]

We're currently looking at raising the cooldown of Leap of Faith and Wind Dance to 9 seconds, and increasing the spell point cost to 10. We're leaving Abundant Step unchanged, since the ki cost is already a limiting factor in a major way that it isn't for sorcerers or favored souls.

Torc's proposed changes won't destroy Leap of Faith. An increased cooldown still leaves is an exceptionally useful ability, that can still be used to escape danger or maneuver in combat.

Go back and fix the Lord of Blades raid instead. The thing is still on lama anyways.

Why punish classes globally because of failed raid design? Because it's cheaper? You're kicking people in the nuts because you designed a raid poorly and need a quick fix. That's all this is imo.

[flaggson]

As much as I hate to admit it I'm on the devs side on this one..... Don't get me wrong... I don't think it should be nerfed into oblivion.... But a slightly longer cooldown and instant aggro shed would go a long way.... Again this is in my opinion.

[Monkey_Archer]

When it was first introduced to the game, abundant step was nowhere near overpowered. Yes, it has a very short cooldown, but you could only use it 3-5 times and that was it due to ki restraints. Then you'd be stuck fighting mobs or meditating for more ki.
Wind dance also isn't that overpowered. Yes, its cost is irrelevant, but being on an annoyingly long 6 second timer means that in any given combat situation if one jump doesn't get you out of harms way, you're probably in trouble.
Leap of faith on the other hand combines both the short cooldown of abundant step plus the irrelevant cost of wind dance, so its not a surprise that when you put this on a selfhealing, nearly invulnerable kite/nuking class its going to cause problems with bosses with weak ranged attacks...


On addressing the actual problem:

Nerfing any ability to fix a symptom of a larger problem is never the answer.

The problem here is twofold, and completely unrelated to wings:
1) Actual tanking classes/PREs are unable to succeed in their role. They have trouble holding agro... They cant survive damage spikes due to lack of hp... ac and other defense mechanisms are often irrelevant... the list goes on...
2) The bosses themselves have much weaker ranged capabilities, and therefore it is easier to combat them from a distance if/when possible.

A fvs's ability to wing-kite is merely the current flavor of the month for dealing with enemy AI. Nerfing it doesn't fix the problem.

IMO the best way to fix the immediate problem here has already been suggested: Give bosses (and perhaps even some non-bosses/mini-bosses) higher ranged DPS. We were given DOTS so our characters can do higher spell dps, so why shouldn't bosses get the same? Many melee mobs in the game already stop to throw spears or something when they cant reach/catch a character so the AI scrip is already there. Just change <Throws spear> to <Throw more DOTS > I'm pretty sure FVSs will stop wing-kiting when they're getting hit by 300 damage DOTS...

On fixing the long term problem: Give actual tank classes some endgame-relevant damage mitigation. That is all.


For class balance reasons I fully expect leap of faith to get nerfed anyway so may as well make a suggestion: Leap of faith/Wind dance - 6 second cooldown, 20 sp. Leave abundant step alone... monks will always be much more severely limited by ki and have no ranged dps to take advantage of kiting anyway.

EDIT: Didn't see Eladrin's post. 9 second cooldown, 10 sp works i guess... I'd still prefer 6 second cooldown, 20 sp maybe even 30 sp... keep some of the fun, just make it cost more

[goodoldxelos]

Terrible idea changing the wings, considering the fact that the wings are permanent ability from original design they should be more useable than at least the monk abilities. Want to balance the game? Put saves on DOTs (at least a fortitude save) so no evasion.

[fasteddie8989]

I would be all for the cool down if it came with shed all argo.

[Rizzyn]

Since Turbine seems to think that the kiting portion of that /win equation is the problem, I wonder how long it will be before we see Sprint Boost, and Barbarian and Monk run speeds smacked with the nerf bat.

But, I have to agree with some of the other posters, and my own thoughts as this threads continue to coagulate the thoughts of others.

The maintenance of aggro is the issue. Why? Because of the way DoT spells, not just DP, but others as well, not to mention spells that can hit for over 1K damage once resistances etc, are handled. A Tank, regardless of Class, can't keep the aggro in the face of damaging spells, so the casters Kite away. I know that I would Kite, I have been hit by LoB for 600 points, turtling up didn't help me, nor did all my DRs and a finished Light and Darkness. Kaboom. Dead.

I know there are others built for damage absorption, but I think I see more FvS hovering around the 400HP mark, than I do around the 600 or so. If Melees can't maintain aggro either by DPS output or by intimidation, then WINGS are not the issue. The WINGS don't buy aggro, damage does. But, I also submit this, if you're a Favored Soul in a Raid Party, and you are 1 of 2 or 3 Healers, Damage Output is NOT your role. Support is. Healing is. Buffs are, staying alive to keep others alive is. Do that, and voila, no aggro. Wings only assist in staying alive.

I will concede, that in discussions with Shade/Greataxer, I mentioned DPing, with help, Sally from MA and LoB, BUT even in that Raid group which was nearly half made up of Artificers, I believe 5 artificers, 1 Water Savant, 2 FvS, 1 Cleric, 1 Monk, 1 Pale Master, 1 Melee/FvS w/Green Steel Lit II Great Sword -- possibly multiclass. By the end, all of us agreed, we needed more Melee DPS, not less.

[Jubbers]

No.
Wings+blade barrier was broken from day one and dots didn't even exist. Let's face it: wings are fun but op.
Just disable Leap of faith when chained or harried and see how it goes before taking further steps

Thats just dumb...

Before I had wings on a FVS I was playing a BB cleric with haste clickies and running in circles 3ft out side the BB with my healing aura running.

Just because you see a well played FVS that can wing at the correct time to kite and minimize damage good on him, clerics can do very similarly if played correctly. I haven't had an issue on either character BB kiting both are effective at the job.

This change is a poor solution to a non existing issue... just Lame.

[FooWonk]

I am against changing the timer and SP cost on LoF or Wind Walk.

If you want to stop kite-tanking, chains work great. IIRC, being chained does a good job of keeping my favored soul pinned down in raids.

Also, even with 1500 damage per tic with DP, it would take a lot of resources to maintain for as long as a frenzied berserker, kensai or tempest can maintain their DPS. Adding a fortitude or will save for half would pretty much cut in half the usefulness of DP against raid bosses and epic, while having little to no effect in the rest of the game (including PvP).

In non-end game content, blade barrier kills 85% of trash easily, other spells the rest. Wings are not required. Anyone who has a casting artificer knows this.

[Isolani]

EQ stopped boss kiting by giving bosses a summon ability, so they just brought you to them rather than chase after you. Or if you want to force melee tanking in a fight, just give the boss a ridiculously powerful ranged attack that will instakill kiters. Seems like there are a lot of easy ways to prevent kiting without changing FvS wings, which is one of the more fun things about the class.

[Vordax]

Just give the raid bosses a Max-Empowered-Enlarged Divine Punishment as a ranged attack. Stack that 3 times and the FVS will be busier healing himself, than trying to get away.

Vordax

[justagame]

By all means, let's make sure all of our important battles consist of the same melee beatdown, where a pack of melees surround a guy and slowly beat him down while the divines heal and hope not to run out of mana before the bad guy dies. Let's make sure to nerf anything that threatens to deviate from this.

Wake me up when it's over.

I personally haven't noticed a preponderance of boss kiting, certainly not of the kind that "breaks the game".

Personally, I am getting tired of all the nerf talk. The game now has so many interrelated nerfs upon nerfs that it's like a Christmas tree with too many ornaments on it, and the result is all sorts of (presumably) unintended results. Part of the problem is that someone perceives an issue, then hits it with a sledgehammer that causes 4-5 imbalances for the one narrow problem that they addressed. We tend to "balance" one thing by hurting many more things that were not causing problems in the first place.

The result is a game that's too far out of whack. A tank with a shield, armor, max intimidate, the best sword he can craft, and all the ac bonuses he can get his hands on is now a laughly irrelevant character. Because of stacking DC bonuses available to some caster classes and TR's, and the corresponding mob saves needed to remain challenging, an offensive caster cleric can now max his wisdom, only to see the majority of his offensive spells close to irrelevant at endgame (amid calls to nerf the one exception, of course). To address THF "twitch", we killed moving glancing blows for ALL THF combat, twitching or not. Sorcs went fom using firewall to make a lot of content irrelevant, to using costless SLA's to make most content irrelevant. I'm sure the answer to that will be to nerf a lot of other things that have nothing to do with SLA's, and hurt many more people than intended. And now we've got a raid that isn't being played out the way it was intended, but instead of changing the raid, let's nerf some class abilities instead???

But by all means, let's go right ahead. Let's nerf the biggest source of fun for a class, because 0.1% of the time someone might use it in a way that means a mindless beatdown wasn't used to kill a boss. While we're at it, let's nerf the one offensive divine spell that works in a meaningful way on bosses. That'll make the game a lot more fun than making some minor changes to a raid.

[Chette]

I don't use my wings as a win button, I use them because they're fun. That's what playing a game is supposed to be right, fun?

I echo the OP. There is no problem with wings. There is a problem with being able to maintain agro while running away. The DoTs of both divine and arcane casters are far too powerful. Fun while they lasted, but they can't stay and maintain any sense of balance.

[RetsacNoom]

Sharing my casual player opinion, that seems to go in the same direction as many here.
Extending the cooldown on FVS wings is the worst posible way to aproach your kiting problem Eladrin, please reconsider looking from the AI (make raid bosses to actively change their combat mode from melee to ranged accordingly to their main target movement) or the enviroment side (making certain areas to prevent wing kiting in someway).
Again, please reconsider your aproach to kiting.

[shadowsaun]

I second the suggestion of aggro loss, it makes sense!

..but that could be abused as well....oh wait! Anything not thought out fully can be abused...**** lets just nerf it

[fasteddie8989]

A better fix would be to have heavy armor reduce damage as a % and med as a smaller % and light even less of a % so a heavy armor tank could tank. The light armor could not tank and would be killed by the bosses damage even at range. So if you get argo from the heavy tank you would probably die.

If you are wearing heavy armor (took as a feat) wings would cost more be on longer cool down ect...

[gloopygloop]

One other possibility might also be to accept that kiting is a perfectly reasonable option that players can use to complete quests.

Not everything has to be melee tank-and-spank.

Especially when Turbine just got done shutting down all of the reasonable options for melee tanking with a shield just 1 update ago.

[patang01]

So nerf Dots and make divine casters healers again?

No thank you.

I rather find a better game where every single class isn't cornholed into 'their job'.

I rather have bosses teleport the caster to them, or chain them and make it impossible to wing away than nerf Dots and wings simply because Turbine can't design a quest or raid that takes these in account.

And I was tired of being the designater healer, was excited when I could do both and I will take another couple of months if not longer break if my FvS gets the same treatment again. That's time where Turbine won't get any money from me.

[Venny]

I would also like to point out that LoB came after me and all I was doing was healing, healing does give you agro period No DoTs, No Blade Barriers, No Archons, No Searing light, No Damage Just Healling. I was chained and unable to get away from him and so I died. At one point I was Chained, Standing in electrified Grease so that when I was Rez'd I died again.

If you want to Fix something a Paid for Class being Nerfed is not the way to go. Fix the Intimmi skill that was broken. The only way I can realistically gain Agro is Death of the DPS who are constatly hitting for 500-700 points of damage with a swing, which would then be My Bad. As my spells are maybe 100-750 on one... I have seen the Damage over Time working as that tends to hold agro but with someone doing 500s say every second over 10 seconds that is 5000 and if I fire off all my Light/Divine spells it still isn't equal to the damage output of the dps unless I roll real well or a constant vorpal roll.

However wizards and Sorcs can and I have witnessed it can do 3.5k on a DoT... Sorcs can weaken an enemy to their element with a clicky... Favoured souls or their champion has to be hit by the enemy and then there is the chance they would be made weak to light/divine spells. Even then light and Divine spells only do 100-900 points of damage, there is no equivilant to it... Fvs and clerics can't do the same output as a Sorc or Wizard can. Where is the middle ground?

If you are nerfing the one thing that makes people Pay to play a class then why bother having the class open to VIPs or people that pay for it. VIP stands for Very Important Person... It is to be special... Nerfing a class that you have to pay for no longer makes the class special. it makes it plain and ordinary.

What is the point in PAYING to playing a Favoured soul?
When a War forged Wizard can heal itself and cast spells that do thousands of points of damage?
When you can be a Warforged Sorc Air savant that can do 3,500 points of damage on a spell, fly and be self healing? The only thing you are paying for here is the Race Warforged and then the Warforged isn't expected to HEAL the rest of the party.
What about a Drow Wizard Pale Master, he is Self healing and can put out thousands of points in damage insantly or over time depending on his build?
Nerfing the Favoured soul class that people Pay for is not the answer.

Already people are gearing up to leave and take their money elsewhere.

I too am considering it as a monthly paying costomer there are other games out there that are much more appealing and cheeper in the long run.

[Tinco]

The spirits that you called with U9 are already haunting you. And this is probably just the start of a mountain of band aids to fix the big band aid that the whole dot spells are. Oh wait, there's even a new arcane dot in U11, right?

Please don't drive down this road. Take the time to develop a vision of how the game should work and bring it in line with how it can work engine/content wise. Together with some other choices from U11 I start to think that you're dancing the helplessness blues here