PLEASE NOTE: This post is intended to tackle PvP issues ONLY. This is not a commentary on invokers' PvE effectiveness AT ALL.
All right, seeing as how we're going to be looking at a major "balancing" update in the future (possibly sometime this year), I wanted to talk about a few issues regarding monks/priests/invokers (I'll just say "invokers").
Firstly, you have to understand what the patches since the WP team took over have done to the class. Here's a brief little timeline (I don't remember the exact patch denotations so I'm going to generalize with time periods):
Time Period 1: We get Spark Rock and Rain of Fire, plus a few other minor skills that aren't very useful (namely, Multi-Lightning and Meteor Rush). At some point around this time, we also get 4th Job skills, along with all the other classes (our 4th job skills are generally much more useful than those of other classes, except for our passive, Blood Fever, which is pretty lame).
For a time, we enjoy being one of the most powerful classes, and life is good. We have a Spark Rock that locks (although it can be canceled by Revenge), Rain of Fire is good burst damage, and Lightning Magnet enables us to disable and deal heavy damage to large groups of enemies all at once. Our Barbarian, Witch's Curse, and Quagmire skills are useless against most players stacking 80+ evade because these skills don't use our full Aim Rate to determine hit %, but the combined locking ability of Spark Rock and Lightning Magnet largely makes up for this.
Time Period 2: A new batch of patches nerfs some of our most important and useful skills, including the almighty Spark Rock, which no longer locks effectively. That would be okay, perhaps, except Lightning Magnet is also nerfed, meaning that -- since Barbarian, Witch's Curse, and Quagmire are mostly useless -- we are left with no effective, reliable way to catch or lock anyone for more than a few seconds (except perhaps Chain Lightning, but lag pretty much makes that useless by this point).
You might say, "Well hey, invokers are a support class, you don't need to lock." That would be fine and dandy if we had a slew of useful support skills, but sadly, that repertoire is limited mostly to Slow Heal, Cure, and Casting Acceleration -- one of which is a buff skill you usually only use once during an entire match. So our only real purpose in PvP becomes running around spamming Slow Heal and Cure... And maaaaybe throwing down an occasional Lightning Magnet, which is unwieldy to use thanks to changes to the Awakening Gauge system that force us to run around finding safe places to charge up energy just so we can contribute in a more meaningful way.
By the way, Witch's Curse has been nerfed so the cooldown is increased by about 16 seconds at level 5, making it even more useless than it was before. Still scratching my head over that one. I mean, come on, the skill hardly ever connects and is canceled when the target takes a hit... It was a pretty weak skill to begin with.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that our trusty X-spam -- which was really our only remaining method of dealing any considerable damage to anything at all, locked or not -- was nerfed to the point that we can't use it for more than a few seconds in PvP without the damage dropping significantly. Also, irritatingly enough, there's no indication of when this kicks in or wears off, so it's kind of a guessing game and even if we figured it out, we don't have time to count down these sorts of things while in a hectic PvP match (and we shouldn't have to, it's just silly).
Time Period 3: If patch notes from other versions are to be believed, we'll be receiving further X-spam nerfs that make Double Shot an "active" rather than "passive" skill, which means it will consume MP and have a set duration and cooldown. Worse yet, if it works in the same way Diffusion Cannon does, it means attack speed buffs will be completely useless to us, further decreasing our (already minimal) damage potential.
One other note: Our healing skills -- at least, Instant and Wide Heal -- will be nerfed to have much higher MP costs (a % of our max MP). This, at least IMO, is a good thing, and I've been asking for it for a long time (mostly b/c we won't have to feel guilty about using our two best healing skills anymore). But when set beside all of the other nerfs (past and proposed), it seems to me that we're going to be left with very little purpose in PvP. Slow Heal? WMs can do that, and they're better for offense and locking, anyways. Lightning Magnet? Most players can overcome it with just a little evade or move speed stacking. So we're left with... Cure as our only way to make a reasonable contribution to a match (maybe Spark Rock too in some cases, but for the most part it's a joke).
I'm trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel here, but so far I don't see it. What's the purpose of playing a class that only has 1 or 2 unique and useful skills? At one point, it was our healing ability that made us special, but WMs can perform almost as effectively in that department with Slow Heal. Our DPS, too, used to be a force to be reckoned with, but now that's been stripped away. Heck, we can't even say we have reliable debuffs anymore (Barbarian, Witch's Curse, RIP). Something has got to give.
Anyways, here are my suggestions. I'm not saying these should all be implemented simultaneously (perhaps choose some and forget others), but we really need a lifeline here. Here goes (they're all quite simple):
- Reconsider the X-spam nerfs. It really wasn't all that OP to begin with since it can only be used effectively on ground-locked targets, and it's really our only decent damage-dealing technique.
- Give us a better 4th Job passive skill. Blood Fever is horrendous. HP/MP Recovery? Really? How about a passive that gives us a slight % chance to avoid status effects? (When I say slight, I mean like 5% max). Playing off of our curing abilities. I don't know, something, just about anything would be better than this.- For the love of all that is holy, make Barbarian, Witch's Curse, and Quagmire take our full Aim Rate into account when determining hit chance %. As they are now, these skills aren't really even worth the risk it requires to use them.
- Give Spark Rock its locking ability back. Nearly every other (or perhaps every other) class has a way of indefinitely keeping someone either air-locked or ground-locked. We can't even do it for more than a few seconds at a time. Spark Rock really didn't need the nerf, it doesn't deal THAT much damage, and evade means it was already useless enough against several classes. (Note: I'm not bringing up Lightning Magnet, because I think that if we got Spark Rock back to the way it was, returning Magnet to the way it was would be unreasonable -- and honestly I'd much rather have the old Spark Rock back than the old Magnet.)
- Give us more buffs or debuffs -- IE, more *support* skills. If you want to force us to play the supporting role, that's fine, but at least give us enough useful support skills to make it a worthwhile endeavor.
--- Anyways, that's it. I just wanted to bring this up before we head down a path that will forever leave the class beyond repair.
Edited by Rimmy, 26 June 2011 - 08:44 AM.