1.60b Patch Notes

[Rosslyn]

"with the resists they suffer causing them to never one shot anything"

hehe, since you also play an armsman and a cleric, you can imagine how hilarious I think this is.  Yes, I realize that the counterparts in other realms can outpace these spells, but not being able to one-shot someone?  Heavens!  Whatever would I do with myself if I couldn't one-shot someone?!?  LOL  

[zaius]

Based on my experience (singular. One time in Avalon city.) with a Spirit Cabby, it makes a pretty big difference. I was using the 45 base drain, now I have the 45 spec drain, so I'd love to try that out with the body debuffs. I think I was hitting oranges for 500 or so with the body debuff. I can hit for over 350 without the body debuff since I got the 45 spec drain. Depends alot on resists, but the body debuff should be even more effective, percentage-wise, against resists from gear and buffs.

I've considered respeccing to get the 15% body resist debuff while keeping the 45 spec lifetap, but at that point, in most RvR situations, I'd probably be better off getting in another drain. Unless I can get a root on them first.

In response to Mchagen's comment about previous cabby lovin', I went back through the patch notes since 1.37, and aside from the DoT boost in 1.51, there's not a whole lot there. There was the initial attempt to help the pets (almost exactly a year ago), after which we ended up with 2 or 3 usable pets, albeit with a slew of bugs. Then there were various pet bug fixes, most notable being making amber stun more often.
  There were the new debuffs, and the insta-cast debuff change, then the resist debuff change back to 2s, but that really isn't cabalist lovin'.
  When I started playing, the main problem with the cabalist was that it wasn't very group-friendly. Still isn't really. I think people started to realize that cabalists weren't totally useless though. In the mid-30's, alot of times I couldn't get into a pygmy group to save my life. Eventually I'd get in a group and usually end up as the main puller (nearsight + root = good puller), and it worked out pretty well. If I met up with that group again, I'd get a spot.
  For a long time, on Iseult at least, there weren't many high level cabalists around. Once more cabalists got up high enough to effectively RvR, I think the impressions of cabalists in general changed. Even if they're just RP whoring, landing an aoe dot and getting 5 or 6 deathspam messages from one caster looks pretty impressive.
  That's my theory at least. Cabalists gave up on getting any major lovin', matter got a decent boost, and over time other classes stopped avoiding grouping with cabalists.
 Having decent pets was the main thing we were looking for I think. As a class defining ability, it had been pretty mediocre for a long time. Our class-specific RA still blows (or at the least is too expensive), but there are plenty of classes that have it just as bad, if not worse. The Spirit spec line is still kinda weak; the debuffs are nice, but you have to give up alot to get them. Plus, you become more of a support caster than a damage-dealer. Maybe if they address the RP's for support characters issue a little more you'd see more spirit cabbies, which would be a Good Thing. The spirit spec snare is pretty worthless too. Even with just the pet fixes, you might see more Spirt Cabalists. Raising spirit makes a pretty big difference in the pet stregth and durability, but in the past the pets weren't worth the effort. Matter will still be the cookie cutter template, unless they nerf DoTs, which hopefully they won't.
  I like my body spec, aside from the body resists in RvR. The lifetransfer change is a nice bonus. With the second best spec lifetap and lifetransfer, at least on paper, I could generate positive hitpoints with a drain/transfer cycle. Only 46 per cycle for me, and 16 per cycle for the other guy (60 and 19 if I had 46 body for the best lifetransfer), but still an interesting way to waste mana. I'll have to try it out once this patch goes live, or if I can get the level 50 version of Z over to Pendragon.

[Gueuze]

One measure of how effective you are is how much the enemy bitches about you.  AOE DoTing matter cabs are the target of a lot of enemy bitching.

Now all you need is chain armor, an insta-cast AOE disease to foil those pesky enemies healing themselves, some buffing ability, and some healing ability, and you could be a shaman that everyone claims is so gimpy.

[Mchagen]

Yeah, one shaman posted a reply to me on the vn boards saying he had cancelled his account and he was even more glad at doing so because friars where getting the group heal over time.. and that friars were 1.5x pts whereas shamans were only 1.0x.  I mean when will people get a clue, this guy was a joke, to say the least.  I tried to explain him the differences of casters and pseudo fighters, but I guess nothing stuck.  

*All* figher classes and pseudo fighters have to spec in at least two lines to be effective, casters do not.   Apparently, it was his reasoning that since friars were 1.5x pts they were far superior to shamans, even though their heal line sucks and they have to spec in staff, enhance, and to a degree, parry to be good in melee.  

I'm sick of hearing how pathetic shamans are now... I made one way back when they weren't that great, around jan/feb 02 and promptly made my cleric right after.  If there were as they are now, I wouldn't have had a lvl 50 cleric.

[Mchagen]

And about my arguments and comparisons for casters.  I have had the opportunity to play a 50 wizard, my bro's, a 50 theurgist, my other bro's, and a 41 cabalist, mine/bro's.  So my comparisons are made based on my play time on those characters.  

I agree with everyone with the fact that our caster department has been suffering greatly over the entire span of this game.  It's nice we're seeing some improvements.  I'll be happy when the elementalist class changes roll around, if ever.

[Bolldar Bloodaxe]

Rosslyn, I wasn't requesting the ability to one shot anyone. Though most classes can kill a wizzie in one to two seconds including tanks, sheesh I haved died to one shots from archers and assassin types more times than i can count, ive been cut down inside a second by almost any middie class or any tank. Something we simply cant do back to any class.

My point was that with a 4 second cast and a 20 second recast the only way a bolt will ever do any good is to one shot someone because the follow up takes too long assuming the first one does do any damage. Wizards are all offence no defence. Now this scenario might be ok if the wizards offence was great but its not, in fact its pretty sucky. So your faced with next to no defence coupled with a poorer offence than most other casters. This of course because the wizs primary offensise spell, the bolt doesnt work at all in RvR except in very rare circumstances.

And i too have a 50 armsmen and a 50 cleric and both are infinately more survivable and able to hand out damage in RvR than my wizard. I think armsmen need a some help vis a vis other realm tanks (polearms are gimped IMHO) but they got no probs compared to casters or wizards in particular And my cleric I actually am pretty happy with in RvR and he is getting better soon.

Im now specced out of my favoutite line (fire) but if you ever want to try running a wizard around in RvR give me a yell, ill loan you Amerasu. She still has the base fire line bolt so you can see how useful it is and the other joys associated with paper armour and low HPs.

(Edited by Bolldar Bloodaxe at 4:37 am on Feb. 8, 2003)

(Edited by Bolldar Bloodaxe at 4:43 am on Feb. 8, 2003)

[Sodom]

I'm glad they added the HOT to at least increase the viability of a rejuv-friar template. After my respec, I now will have the first HOT to play around with. Hopefully it will be a true HOT, rather than a regen boost (like Mentalists get). Anyways, if anybody wants to see a little HOT friar action, send me a tell once 1.6 goes live

[Rosslyn]

<edited>  I'll just say that I think my previous post was completely misunderstood, and I'll leave it at that.  Due to the obvious emotion attached to these sorts of issues by some people, I think it's best that I not choose to engage in any sort of debate/conversation, lest the normal "tongue-in-cheek" aspect of the vast, overwhelming majority of my posts be missed.

Thanks for reading, please drive around.

(Edited by Rosslyn at 9:06 pm on Feb. 8, 2003)

[Zutroy]

I believe the friar HoT is exactly the same spell that shamen get (called friggs). It just boosts your regen rate and only really has applicable uses in PvE. While in combat it regens very little but while sitting down, you can recover a whole bar of HP in about 30 seconds.

Friars are now very good PL toons since you get buffs, HoT (which doesn't take any XP), and that aggro taunt.