Aura of Spirit vs. Paragon of Spirit

[Urim]

Actually iamweaver, the best way to graph the upgrades to mana regen would be to make it percentage based. How much better is XX expansion mana regen over original mana regen at say ... Luclin when we first were introduced and received our mana regen and Paragon lines. If you do that you will see a graph that looks like this one below showing the increased mana regen lines at each lvl increase expansion.



The beastlord and enchanter lines are the same line as our mana regen effectiveness has increased by the same percentages. The only reason the Paragon line has a steeper slope is due to not receiving an upgrade to it with PoP so the next 2 upgrades had to make up. In all actuality the paragon line has increased in effectiveness in proportion to our regular mana regen buff.

And that is what the major problem is with this AA line. It is scaling in relation to the wrong stat. Instead of scaling in a similar fashion to regular mana regen buffs it has needed to scale with the increases in average hp/mana levels so that it would maintain the same relative effectiveness. In luclin and even in PoP it was an extremely powerful ability that set us apart from the other classes. It wasn't uncommon for the use of a MGB Paragon to decide a win or loss. Nowadays with the poor decision to scale it with mana regen buffs instead of mana amount it has fallen off to being a joke of an ability. All the while it is coming with increasing costs.

I honestly don't know of a way to make it back into the powerful tool that it was and i wouldn't be surprised to find out this weakening of the ability was actually implemented with the sole intent of making it less useful. However, now that the ability that used to be 'class defining' by many is a joke i think it would be nice if we were given something that increased our utility and make us wanted like we were in PoP.

It's sad when i am telling a recruit beastlord that his role on the raid is to SE 3 groups and then DPS without getting himself killed.

[iamweaver]

You are correct; properly inserting the beginning point of that line at the right expansion shows the higher curve slope starts at a dfferent spot in the graph (and in fact ends up being steeper) - but that was not my decision to place PoS there; that was Hakaabe's, and I forgot to move it properly.   Regardless of where the appearance of PoS occurs, I see no reason why new mana regen lines are required to "catch up" to the other lines.   The clear implication there is that the Devs inserted the ability in as an underpowered one designed to handle mana/health pools for the wrong era, then had to "beef us up" to make us catch up with the other classes. I see no evidence of that; when it came out it seemed to be quite viable. In addition, the other half of PoS, the health regen, has the exact same slope as other class HoT, or HoT+bonus ability gains since their introduction, except for the cleric line, which appeared earlier, and continues to this day to increase at a slightly faster rate. By your logic, this is the opposite of what should be occurring.  The cleric line should have a lesser slope to reflect its age, and the newer lines should be "catching up".

But there is a bigger issue here than that. Percentage-based statistics are not applicable here because the baseline against which they are being measured is an external factor, namely mana pool sizes.  Use of statistics for those not familiar with stats can be misleading (as Mark Twain said, "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics"). Be very careful when using them - graphs showing comparisons must in almost every case use a common baseline of some sort. 

**edited to fix stupid spelling errors ***

[iamweaver]

Apologies to Denti. I realized that you were right in one respect - the slope of the PoS/AoS line is, of course, altered when you "rescale" the function to ticks. Silly of me.  As a Mana Regen ability, PoS is clearly in line with the other MR lines.  Notice that in this better scale, the slope of the two "primary" mana regen classes is greater than the "secondary" lines, though not to an enormous extent.  Just enough for us to whine about, not enough for the Devs to care! :)



I am glad I wasn't testing myself, I would have lost 20 points, and been forced to explain why I was wrong :).

[hakaaba]

Hakaaba, I have two questions: I can only think of 2 new sources of mana regen: "Mobile KEI" potions, and OOC regen; what other ones have I forgotten?

Mana potions are irrelavent since they don't stack.  OOC regen is a huge one, but theres also various clickies, as well as all the many boosts to base mana regen from AAs, jesters, etc.

Theres a very important fact related to OOC regen.  It was introduced, the devs said, to make up for the fact that regen was not scaling nearly as fast as hp/mana and especially endurance pools.

Its pretty obvious that they are scaling PoS as a regen ability and therefore its not surprising that it does not scale with pools.  A fact you have not contested and that is pretty obvious from the data i collected.

But, PoS isn't a regen.  And the plain fact is that measured in terms of the amount of benefit recieved, Aura of spirit is dramatically worse than Paragon.  Upgrades of abilities should not be worse than the original after adjusting for "mudflation".  Ideally, they should be the same, although in some cases upgrades are better.  But clearly, aura is worse.  And thats the problem.  You can say they scaled it exactly like a regen, and you can even be right, but that doesnt make regen scaling enough.

Quadrupling its effectiveness in all respects suddenly makes it considerably more powerful (and of shorter duration) than cleric AA HoTs (1600*7 vs 550*12), so that is unlikely to happen on the HP side, as well.

Cleric HoTs can be MGB'd, so they have the same limitations as current perfection.  The fact that it would be flagged non-MGB is what allows it to be 4x as powerful.

but that was not my decision to place PoS there; that was Hakaabe's, and I forgot to move it properly.

Who says Paragon is a PoP ability?  Most importantly, it is listed under Class AAs (Luclin) and i believe it was introduced one patch before PoP was released. 

[iamweaver]

Hakaaba, I have two questions: I can only think of 2 new sources of mana regen: "Mobile KEI" potions, and OOC regen; what other ones have I forgotten?

Mana potions are irrelavent since they don't stack.  OOC regen is a huge one, but theres also various clickies, as well as all the many boosts to base mana regen from AAs, jesters, etc.

Both lines of MR Clickies already existed in VT.  Innate MR caps were already there in Luclin, and were merely scaled up just as the other forms of MR were. BUt it's true that we have the Vet AAs now, and they can be powerful if used cleverly.  I hadn't thought of those.

Theres a very important fact related to OOC regen.  It was introduced, the devs said, to make up for the fact that regen was not scaling nearly as fast as hp/mana and especially endurance pools.

Its pretty obvious that they are scaling PoS as a regen ability and therefore its not surprising that it does not scale with pools.  A fact you have not contested and that is pretty obvious from the data i collected.

But, PoS isn't a regen.  And the plain fact is that measured in terms of the amount of benefit recieved, Aura of spirit is dramatically worse than Paragon.  Upgrades of abilities should not be worse than the original after adjusting for "mudflation".  Ideally, they should be the same, although in some cases upgrades are better.  But clearly, aura is worse.  And thats the problem.  You can say they scaled it exactly like a regen, and you can even be right, but that doesnt make regen scaling enough.

True, but OOC regen bypasses all other forms of mana regen, so I am not sure that its planned to be in addition to the other forms, but in place of them. All AA HoTs though, suffer from the same loss of power due to mudflation (Cleric CR line has gone from 250 HP/tick at the start of Luclin to 550 HP/tick now).  Since the change is across the board I assume it's deliberate.  Clerics FINALLY got upgrades to the castable group HoT spell in PoR and TSS (the last was Kunark-era!), so the devs do *know* about the issue, but seem to want to ignore it on the AA side.

My main concern is class balance: that we will see a hue and cry from the chanter community that our new Paragon-plus(TM) usurps their role as mana regen kings (though necro's already can do that, of course.  Shhhh...).  MR *was* always such a touchy subject prior to OOC - but with its release, things might have loosened up a bit at SoE.  we can hope.  If not, then we might be looking at some odd spell line instead, along the lines of Demand for Blood :(

Quadrupling its effectiveness in all respects suddenly makes it considerably more powerful (and of shorter duration) than cleric AA HoTs (1600*7 vs 550*12), so that is unlikely to happen on the HP side, as well.

Cleric HoTs can be MGB'd, so they have the same limitations as current perfection.  The fact that it would be flagged non-MGB is what allows it to be 4x as powerful.

Righto.

but that was not my decision to place PoS there; that was Hakaabe's, and I forgot to move it properly.

Who says Paragon is a PoP ability?  Most importantly, it is listed under Class AAs (Luclin) and i believe it was introduced one patch before PoP was released. 

True, but when released, it was done so with PoP content already known and rolling out of Beta.