Clarity II

[terrox]

I don't want to seem Rude but I really think that option really sucks . if it was a bug it would not have said in ability description that it lasted until death .As for now I wont be playing my sorcerer anymore and we will see how long I will remain in Istaria

[Malicore]

funny how valkor is stun immune now, with no limit on timer.
[06/02/13 14:56:46] Lightning Stun failed because Valkor The Impaler has Fearlessness (Stun Immunity) (NoExpire)

also now his guards cast fearlessness? what kinda non-sense is this?
[06/02/13 14:57:56] Valkor's Guard used Fearlessness.

Valkor himself should be mezz immune, but not stun, and his guards should have neither immunity. i'm really glad my subs expired. since all you folks care to do lately is mess with things that don't need fixing, and not fix those that do. have fun folks, cya around.

[terrox]

what Valkor and mobs can have total Immunity and a sorceerer cant ... That is BS

[LOVWYRM]

There has been a big patch with lots of nice things for us.
Lots of us enjoy this, lots of us have fun with that.
Thank you..

And we all know: Where people work hard (like dev team did) there mistakes can happen.
We always understood that -and we still do.

But I think this time its essential,
that the things we talk about in this thread have to be changed back!
It makes no sense to annoy the players to the limit.
Game balance will not be destroyed if ClarityII stays the way it was.
Lots of our tactics based on that!
We still had to fight hard to win- we did not have superpower advantage from that.
(sorry Amon- your offer is not really helpful ).

Who wants Reklar stunnable- whats the mess with Valkor & Co??
Why is Elilal soloable now?

We all do not like and do not want that.

Keep the customers satisfied- Please-
Dont allow annoyance and frustration to be stronger than the fun with the new patch.

Thank you for considering

[Knossos]

What Lovwyrm said.

Knossos

[AmonGwareth]

Going to make an additional change to Clarity 2 after discussion... it will now work as an AoE ability when used.

[Northwind]

It looks to me that you really want to alienate and make all your players rage quit with all these "bug" fixes and limits and nerfs and so on and so forth.
Next you will find out that Gold Rage was bugged too and it was supposed to hit 1 time instead of 3.

way to go.

[LOVWYRM]

Feels like an oriental bazaar to me.
Bargaining until the night falls.
Or someone wins.
Make it a win- win (not a win- whine) situation:
Happy customers and game(balance) not in danger.

In this special case, we- the players- are not looking for a compromise.
Just give us back the sorcerer, Valkor& friends, Reklar and Elial the way they were.

This changes have not been announced- so we could not discuss it.
And we (at least Flame and me and close friends-can`t talk for others) can`t see any sense in that.

[Dracillion]

No wonder this wasn't announced... such a gap of communication between development and the player base.

If any sneaky changes were made, it should be to Crossbowman. They suck. Really. They're good at two things: raising your rating and missing.

Edit: Elial was the one bastion of ARoP requiring a group. I guess the game will really live up to its schtick when 100/30's rule the skies!

[AmonGwareth]

There was never any intention to "stealth" this in, it was the result of reworking the Immunity effects for the epic mobs (since some of them never worked). I hadn't realized Clarity 2 used one. However, ultimately an ability that gives permanent (or near-permanent) immunity to both stun and mez is incredibly overpowered even if it is non-masterable and that is why it remains changed.

Being able to cast it on your group and have it give 50% of your battle time with immunity is still vastly overpowered in my opinion, but I'm willing to let it go at that.

[Alisto]

In the past month or so, I've used Clarity.....ONCE, to hunt automatons for a speed crystal (ofwhich I now have three )

Sure it is strong when its used....but then so are healing abilities, Stuns, and gold rage to name a few, all of which I persoanlly used much more than i did clar

Clarity is very strong against mobs that stun or mez, but -not many mobs use Stuns and mezs-, and definitely not enough to deem the buff overpowered.

It is an,ability that has a very specific use against a select few things, and all other times it is just taking up space on my hotkey bar (which is thankfully now a problem anynore, but I hope I got the point across xD)

[Azath]

There was never any intention to "stealth" this in, it was the result of reworking the Immunity effects for the epic mobs (since some of them never worked). I hadn't realized Clarity 2 used one. However, ultimately an ability that gives permanent (or near-permanent) immunity to both stun and mez is incredibly overpowered even if it is non-masterable and that is why it remains changed.

Being able to cast it on your group and have it give 50% of your battle time with immunity is still vastly overpowered in my opinion, but I'm willing to let it go at that.

Might not be intention, but giving us no warning about it still feels like it.

I can agree with the immunity effects for epics - i mean, their epics, why -should- they be able to be stunned and made easy to do with a ped in the right classes?

But changing clarity like this is a no - one thing is appealing in the sorcerer school: Spellbinds. Clarity used to be appealing too...i'll agree, clarity was a pretty darn powerful thing, but now think: Of the mobs that -do- stun, only a few you want clarity for - i can name bioscholars off the top of my head (They're literally impossible for a dragon or a biped out of sorc to do alone without clarity). I'm almost sure it's unintended, but i really want to be able to get my revenge on bioscholars since they can permastun So no changes to clarity. I don't think you know how much it isn't used, nor know how vital it is when it is used.

[Malicore]

i do not play a sorcerer. i did however lvl one, so i could use the immunity for my ranger. lowering the time for it's use makes it worthless to me and any other class besides sorcerer. by the time i switch to sorcerer cast the clarity II, switch back to ranger and get to my destination.. it will be gone. so now what was the point of lvling sorcerer. and if it were a bug, why was the description stating it wasn't, listing as "until death". we are not invincible during that time, as we still do die. i'm not getting this overpowering thing you keep talking about. you knew what the descript said when it was added to the game.
you knew what it said when you claimed it was a bug. now you decide to mess with the ability, and everyone else suffers for it.

personally, i do not know anyone (especially ppl i group with) that want to play a sorcerer for the entire fight. or as a main class. if it's not set back to what it was, the class will become "totally" useless.

as i've mentioned in the past (and don't take this the wrong way and use the excuse that i'm attacking a dev) but if you played the game, you'd have a much better understanding of what overpowered is, and what problems a lot of your recent changes are making for those that have played this game for a long time, have built strategies around thier skills/abilities and so on. Please stop making us come on here and beg you to reversing things that do not need messing with in the first place.

Please find more time to fix real problems (like all the bugs that have been around for many more years than the i can recall) rather then angering the community, over something that has worked fine for several years. we do not need more problems

[LOVWYRM]

Well spoken, my friend.
I indeed had the same feeling- but did not dare to say,
cause I have much respect and love for the devs and the work they do.
Some decisions of devs are quite the opposite of what players want.
I say SOME.
Lots of changes that make us players whine and rant,
ARE necessary-to keep the game going and to realize a long-term concept.
Others are NOT.
Others are made by devs because they do not play the game
day after day,year after year -and therefore they will never know about all the details a vet players does.
Which it not a prob most of the time , which does not devalue the competence of the devs al all!
(its not their job to play the game, but develop it!^^)
Until it comes to a sitution like the one in this thread.
I remember the time when CoT was nerfed: No player wanted it, we all have been whinig and complaining
Some players left to never return.
"Old" CoT made NO player uber- and surely we, who stayed, could live with the nerfed one*shruggs*
But what for?
CoT was a reason the level that class.
So is clarity for the sorcerer.
What happened when CoT was nerfed, will happen here again.
Like Alisto and Azath and Mali pointed out:
If devs were hard core players like we are- they would see, that this nerf isen`t worth all the annoyances.
We loved to have it- we rarely used it- but if- it felt great to have.
No uber players because of it- no easy fights.
The nice new patch is not what players are talking about atm- but the issues we talk about here.

Amon at least made an offer, thank you for that Amon-much appreciated.
Its better than nothing-but a bitter aftertaste will remain.

[AmonGwareth]

I appreciate your feedback and thoughts on this. Someone (I can't find the reference now in a quick scan) mentioned that Bioscholars can perma-stun players and so I started looking at their abilities. They actually only have one ability that stuns and many of the undead share this one, its called Paralyzing Gaze.

Unfortunately for all of us its a direct copy of Area Spellbind. What does that mean? At its lowest level its an AoE stun/mez that lasts for 30 seconds and recycles every 45. At its highest level it will stun/mez for 60 seconds with a 45 second recycle. I see now why you all felt like you needed Clarity.

The problem then in my mind is not simply the missing near-permanent stun/mez immunity that Clarity 2 offered. Rather, the problem is that both players and Undead/WA monsters can perma-stun/mez each other. I'm certainly open to suggestions about how to fix this, but I truly think that returning Clarity2 isn't a solution, its a band-aid and a bad one at that.

First, stuns and mezzes that last 30 or more seconds are crazy. Play any other MMO and you'll rarely find one that lasts that long. Typically they are 3 to 10 seconds at most. This is because (as we all know) being unable to act in a game isn't any fun. But, how to fix that?

From the monster side I can see some solutions that might help... First is to alter Paralyzing Gaze so that even at its highest level it doesn't perma-stun/mez by lowering the duration of the Trepidation debuff below the rate of recycle (or raising the rate of recycle, or both). In addition, changing many of the Monster schools to use some other ability instead of an AoE mez, leaving only the powerful monsters with it, would certainly help as well.

However, I don't feel that this can be done simply from the Monster-side of things as it would still leave an unbalanced situation. So, from the player side (because perma stun/mez is bad no matter which side you are playing on), the only suggestion I would have is to reduce the duration of the Area Spellbind debuff below the rate of recycle. If I had to throw out numbers I'd say something like... Area Spellbind duration being 15, 20, 25, and 30 seconds for each of the versions.

Please note, I am not attempting to destroy your way of play. I am attempting to correct an underlying problem that has been exposed by fixing both sides of the gameplay. Also, as a footnote, I will temporarily change Clarity 2 back for the next update (coming this week to Blight I hope) while we are discussing this larger change. I'm open to discussion and thoughts.

[LOVWYRM]

You still manage to impress me Amon *bows *

This is an generous offer. Thank you very much.
Thy too for explaing the probs around the prob. I was not aware of some.
I hope, together we`ll find a solution.

I retire from this discussion now- leaving it to "true" sorcerers.

Besides that, I have to hurry to help Awdz to prepare things for the Birthday- to come- of someone special:-)^^

ahh- and not to forget- pls talk to Valkor, Reklar and Elial to go back in line- gifted are a bit impatient atm..

[Arzel Rashemi]

Thank you for listening to us and allowing it to be as it was, at least until a more balanced solution is found.

[TheRock]

Maybe this is not too clear for me In order to deprive us of using Clarity II the way it was you are going to take the time to change the mez/stun on the mobs that use it also...hmm thats a lot of work and could create a lot of bugs(pretty sure that will happen) just so we are not (so-called overpowering) when we have Clarity II on us. Do you all have the time to take on this task of balancing what you call a problem? Please don't start this mightmare al over again.

[Knossos]

It shoulkd not be forgotten that a player can be in range of 2 or more of the mobs who can mez/stun and this can cause unbalance if mob and players are only adjusted on a one-to-one basis. Spawn density and mob separation may also need a bit of adjustment, Not only the Delgarath area but also Old Rachival comes to mind and as well the Satyr Isles.

Knossos

[Dracillion]

Glad to see it's going to be reverted back for the time being.

These things really need to be discussed with the people it effects most: the player base, before it gets pushed. Yes, none of us want nerfs and we all want to über powerful, but at least we can conduct open discussions about it and tune in before the axe is dropped. This change unannounced and recent pushes for silo limitations makes me wonder. At the very least, the silo limitation was publicized and documented where objections could be noted. This is just a hot mess.