Arcane Devotion suggestion

[Shwish]

Both warlocks and conjurer are aware of the importance of this spell for fulfilling your specific role in the warzone. My experience playing a conjurer is fairly limited but speaking from the point of view of a warlock in the warzone, I can say that without arcane devotion active you are a 'sitting duck'. What's worse is that unless you're a conjurer with points in the insightful passive, the duration of the spell is the same as the cooldown therefore you cannot recast it until it has expired. This alone has caused me countless deaths in fights that I would have surely won.

Some might argue that all the other classes have that spell that their class is dependant on such as beserk or recharged arrows etc. Those classes are still capable of fighting back or escaping a tricky situation without those buffs active unlike a mage who, without devtion active, has the slowest casting spells in the game and are fully reliant on those spells.

My suggestion is to make Arcane Devotion more of a luxury than a necessity. In order for this to work, the cast time of all mage spells need to be halved to make them equal to what it would have been with Arcane Devotion(5) active. No more having to recast a fairly short lasting buff in order to be on par with the other classes. This would also help low levels mages before they reach level 25.

The next part of the suggestion is to remodel the existing Arcane Devotion spell to be a short last burst cast speed type of spell such as the hunters Cold Blood. For 4,5,6,7,8 all spells casted by the mage would have its cast time reduced to 0s on a 60s cooldown. Cast time, GDC of the buff, mana costs and animations can still remain the same. GDC's of the spells you cast in the duration of the buff will still come into play so the mage would have to chose wisely how he wishes to spend those precious seconds. I feel that this is a fair trade off seeing that mages have had no benifit it turns of dps from the raise in level cap and new gears.

This is just a rough idea of how to solve the issues caused by the cast speed fix and the mages sole reliance on this one spell. All input and criticism is welcome and if anyone has a better idea please feel free to share it.

[Hopeakettu]

I really like your ideas. Shorter cast times and Arcane Devotion in a Cold Blood style would help a lot.

but I think it's also important to say that both parts of your suggestion would have to be applied together, otherwise:
1) with shorter casts times and current Arcane Devotion mages would have an incredibly fast casting speed which would contribute to current class disbalance
2) with only Arcane Devotion remodelled to be similar to Cold Dlood, casting times would be even worse than they're now and mages would be in a much worse situation.

I know these are no great observations, but it's necessary to keep those in mind.

[Quincebo]

My suggestion about the cast speed ''fix'' :
Give bracelets a cast speed bonus

14cs from staff, 7cs from gloves, 7 cs from bracelet...

[ieti]

Quince this will not help alot, because of the current cast speed formula. There is a point after which no matter how much you put change in cast times is very small. Let's say after 100%(?) cast speed changes in cast time is relatively small. So another 7% in the best case will not do alot.

Better is to rethink the cast times and gcd, so mages can have more relaxed and fluid gameplay.

Even more staff damage and attack mode can be removed. Mage is pure spell class. I do not see a point of this part. Better is to put other modifiers on staffs which really can benefit our gameplay.

One of oldest mage annoys is constantly going off attack mode.

[Lekarz]

So why not make Arcane Devotion active-passive buff like recharged arrows and make it on lvl 5 decreasing casting time by half? It would take some hp or mana each min of use as a bad point of using it... It would also fix OP of Mind Squash just a bit.

I was sure bracelets have cs too... Mana, hit chance, AS, resists are avaible.

[Zas_]

+1 to OP

Though i think speed of casting should get a global increase:

- increase cast speed for all
- reduce a bit GCD (for all classes)
- speed up some "slow casting" spells (for all classes).
- give a casting speed burst to mages (ala Cold Blood), drop Arcane Devotion
- reduce spell effects durations, adjust cooldowns (ie. current spell has 30 seconds effect and 60 seconds cooldown, replace by 15 seconds effect and 30 seconds cooldown, mana cost divided by ~2)

In fact, i think the game is globally too slow, i would increase base movement speed a bit too (+5%), and reduce stop to cast delay by a fraction (x0.8).

Also get rid off Horn wm spell (with per-class wm spells it will create too much imbalance anyways), and replace it by a speed burst for all classes since level 0 (Sprint +25% speed, using ie. 50 mana per second, capped duration of 20 seconds, cooldown 30 seconds).

Overall, mages need faster casting, and all classes faster gameplay, movement speed (normal or burst) have to be almost equal to all since it creates much more imbalance than a speed debuff (which costs more mana, longer casting time, and is dispellable, also add a spell to protect a group versus speed debuff).

[Shwish]

Originally Posted by Hopeakettu

but I think it's also important to say that both parts of your suggestion would have to be applied together, otherwise:
1) with shorter casts times and current Arcane Devotion mages would have an incredibly fast casting speed which would contribute to current class disbalance
2) with only Arcane Devotion remodelled to be similar to Cold Dlood, casting times would be even worse than they're now and mages would be in a much worse situation.

Yes, the two part of the suggestion was intended to be applied together. I apologize for not making that clear enough.

Originally Posted by Quincebo

My suggestion about the cast speed ''fix'' :
Give bracelets a cast speed bonus

14cs from staff, 7cs from gloves, 7 cs from bracelet...

The issue I'm adressing has nothing to do with the actual cast speed of spells but the reliance of the Arcane Devotion buff and ways it can be improved. This is a topic of another discussion which I really don't want to get into in this thread.

And I have seen a conjurer bracelet with +4% cast speed on it. These items do exist but are very rare.

[Fightherpath]

+1 to OP

PS.10chars

[Castingbeast]

Id say either make AD completely a passive one, or:

For conjus: Once they used AD, give ~5-10 secs back to the duration of the spell after every healing spell casted on an ally... (Or even on themselves o.0).

For locks: Hmmm a tough one, but maybe doubling its duration would be a fair thing to implement. Or the same thing as with conju, give back seconds to the spell's duration after every offensive spells used on an enemy, only less secs, since locks have a few... .

Tho the best solution would be imho to have a passive AD for conjus and locks as well with a lowered effect (%).

[Phlue4]

Originally Posted by Quincebo

My suggestion about the cast speed ''fix'' :
Give bracelets a cast speed bonus

14cs from staff, 7cs from gloves, 7 cs from bracelet...

cast speed in equip has barely any impact on gameplay, you just do not need it any longer (except for spells like resurrecting witOUT arkane devotion...........)