LFG

I understood one thing in the EQ2 panel at Fanfaire yesterday about game mechanics.

The spells for each class are going to be consolidated, based on similar spell timers. So as a defiler, for example, I will only have one group buff to cast everytime I die rather than 3, as I do now.

I have all my debuffs with similar durations grouped on macro keys now, so I only have to click one macro to cast all my debuffs with a 36 second duration. What spell consolidation will do for me is combine my debuffs with the same duration into a single spell. For debuffs I don't have macroed, therefore, this will reduce the number of spells I have to cast on mobs, and will make it much easier to keep all my debuffs up on mobs at all times, without all the repetitive spell spamming I have to do now.

This change will only consolidate my buffs and debuffs, and not my heals and wards. I currently use 7 hotkey bars to play my defiler, and this change will likely eliminate the need for about 2 of those hotkey bars.

I've seen some major complaints about this new change in other threads, and I'm kind of confused about that. It seems to me that I will be much better off, rather than worse off with this change.

The major benefits in spell consolidation to me are:

1. I will be able to play my defiler much more enjoyably because I won't have to spam debuffs non-stop.

2. I won't have to spend a full minute recasting buffs everytime I die. Instead, I'll only have to cast one group buff and my single target buff.

3. I'll be able to keep all my debuffs on mobs all the time, instead of having to constantly spam 10 to 16 second duration debuffs that often expire before I can recast them.

4. In no case will I be worse off than I am now. None of the consolidated spells will be nerfed, only combined into a single spell. All my spells are at master, but if I had two AD3s combined with one master spell, the resulting spell I would get is a master spell.

I consider this to be a major benefit, and am honestly surprised that others might not see this in the same way. So I'd love to understand why anyone could not be happy about this.

Your comments please.

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Shaggis

Same casting time?

You now don't have to worry about whether to try to work in another debuff or get a quick heal on the tank first?

You aren't rewarded if you know a certain mobs attacks and therefore prioritize which debuffs to land first?

Honestly the biggest deterrent for death atm is having to rebuff and the death effects. So this will make recovering from death much easier. Sure its annoying but I thought failure was supposed to be annoying... don't die! :P

Are all the cures going in 1 button too?

razieh

You already can keep up all your spells quite easily so this change makes curse weaving completely useless, not to mention what will I do on raids now auto attack? I will have TONS of down time with nothing to do, this to me does not seem like an enjoyable change not unless they fill the gap with MORE spells.

I like being kept busy, I like having to time everything to make sure I can keep all my debuffs up this change will just trivialize the game even more. Does that make more sense?

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LFG

I hear you Raz, you like some of the activity that I consider repetitive and boring I think?

Just think of it this way - you will now have more time to achieve your destiny as a dps machine.

I don't have curseweaving, but agree this change will further trivialize that achievement, since it would now probably apply to only 2 spells.

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LFG

No - consolidation is going to be done by duration, not casting time.

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razieh

No you are wrong, this will not help me become more DPS at all, casting hostile spells to proc things while auto attacking was my source of dps. They removed these now reducing my DPS and giving me more time to auto attack(which I wasn't missing any swings already) So as for improving my DPS it will in fact do the opposite.

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SageGaspar

If there were more details people might not have an issue with it, but here are a few of the things I'm skeptical about:

1. Procs, classes that are balanced around procs, gear that is balanced around procs. It all takes a nerf if they decrease the combat spam. Constant streams of CAs and spells are a big source of procs. 100% ones like Maestro, as well, benefit from having as many quick-cast spells as possible up, including ones like debuffs.

2. Spell haste and recovery reduction, along with AAs, classes, buffs, and gear that are centered around the above. They will all have far less value with lowered spam. Less important for timing, less important for getting off lots of casts if you're just going to be waiting on reuse timers in between.

3. It will effect things like the itemization of dual wields (currently tweaked higher than 2h because of the timing issues) and the value of long delay weapons (if they even pay attention to that while itemizing).

4. The tactile feel of the spam. Constantly having a button to mash is fun for some people, having to wait on something to refresh can be frustrating. Less so in melee combat for me at least, but especially for a mage.

If they just put a couple buffs and debuffs together, frankly I couldn't give a shit. Some offensive spells and CAs for some classes wouldn't matter either. For others it could matter a lot and really change the feel of the class. Might be fantastic for your defiler, might bend other classes over the table. Do they know which are which? Dunno. Which is why I'm withholding judgment until we get more details.

I think the feeling is that the game is in decent shape now and if they go too far on this it could fuck things up needlessly.

Shaggis

Actually I was wondering if the consolidated debuff will take the same amount of time to cast as one debuff did before or the combined casting time of all 3. If it used to take 6s to apply all the debuffs to the mob and it now takes 2...

razieh

Also question!!! Does this mean malignancy, abhorrent seal, Bane of protection and Umbral trap are all one spell now..? If so how is that going to work as abhorrent seal is a toggled spell and who which spell determines the recast or is it a completely new recast.

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LFG

My understanding is that the combined spells will use the longest single casting time that any of the individual spells had. So it isn't going to add together all the individual casting times in the new spell.

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