Why mage advantage over wiz on beam spells?Follow

I know they nerfed beam dd's now to a max of 12 toons being hit per cast. Previously beam spells had unlimited number of targets, which led to the phenomenon of wizzies and mages lagging out non-instanced zones by pulling 50-100 mobs at a time. OK, I understand the reasoning to lower the max # of mobs you can hit at once from infinity to 12. Intentional lagging of a zone amounts to zone disruption which inconveniences others in the zone. No arguments here.

But they had also nerfed wizard beams already by adding negative feedback effects which could be fatal to a kiting wizard: namely, 2-second stun or 2-second blind. Fair enough, that makes it challenging (to put it mildly) for a wizard to pull dozens of mobs and kite them, even with their snare/root spells.

But now both classes have had their beam spells nerfed with a 12-target max. Why does the wizard still suffer from the feedback effect but not the mage?

I realize that one reason would be that wizards can root/snare, including aoe versions of those spells, and mages lack that capacity. Problem is that a mage can solve that problem by duoing with a druid or other snare/root capable class. There's no way for a wizard to "work around" being blinded or stunned. Almost by definition a wizard should ALWAYS be the most efficient and lethal user of any direct damage spell since that's class-defining for them. In other words, with respect to DD's, if a mage can do it, A WIZARD SHOULD BE ABLE TO DO IT BETTER. IMO.

I play both classes, and a have a druid to help them, so it's all academic to me. I'm just wondering what others think. Actually the 12-target max change hasn't bothered me at all. The previous kiting strategy involving exploiting the zonewide lag that would arise if a wiz/mage pulled as many as 100 mobs. I say "exploiting" because that's what it was. They'd rely on the lag becoming so bad that the mobs chasing them would freeze up and they could just burn them down almost no-risk. There was some risk since any strat that depends on zone lag effects is inherently not entirely reliable as mobs could stutter step, warp, etc. and the lag could self-correct at the worst possible time.The caster's movements could freeze up too. But to my mind it still amounted to exploiting and, even worse, it wasn't SKILL-based. So I never used that "strategy."

Even with a 12-target max, you can still put more than 12 and as some start to die the new previously undamaged mobs join the 12-pool target. This works well. I've done this a lot with my druid, whose aoe spell has just a 5-target max (talk about nerfing! lol) and I pull up to 20 blue-to-red mobs with him and I'm able to burn them all down in 5-10 minutes using the 5-target druid aoe dd's.

The limiting factor here is decidedly NOT the 5-target limit. It's one's mana pool and ability to enhance damage and increase frequency and impact of crits. All that comes with the AA's you earn from kiting so it's a self-boosting technique.

The "funnest" part of this game is finding new legal strats to make maximum use of the spells that the Gods of Norrath have seen fit to provide for their followers! ;)



Edited, Mar 8th 2014 7:41am by Sippin

Edited, Mar 8th 2014 7:41am by Sippin

I'll admit to not digging through all the wizard beam spells up to 100, but my understanding is that wizard beams were previously limited to 8 targets, and with the recent nerf were actually increased to 12. Maybe some higher level beams didn't have this restriction, but I know that the first couple versions did. And yeah, I'm not sure why that was the case either.