Thoughtsnap, Peel, Drag, Divide and Conquer...

    All useless in TSO.  I asked about this at Fan Faire and so did others.   The general reply was that this abilities, if allowed to be used on raid mobs, trivialized mechanics such as aggro-drop.  

  I'm gonna complain now...  because I've been thinking for awhile the right way to approach this.  

The first major issue, is that while only SOME mobs aggro drop... nearly EVERY SINGLE raid mob in TSO is immune to these locks.  I don't mind the occasional mob having immunity to these abilities, but there is no good reason for every mob to have that same immunity.  Mobs which do NOT aggro drop, can sometimes kill the Main Tank, and having quick lock abilities might actually allow us Brawlers to do our job on raids and be an off-tank when needed. 

  Secondly... why are SK's allowed to lock everything while brawlers are not?   I asked this and the reply was that they are using "Different" ways of doing it.... my point is it's still the same thing.  an SK can insta grab ANYTHING, at any time... and that does indeed trivialize aggro dropping.  I don't want them nerfed... I just want my own abilities to be un-nerfed. 

 Lastly , These abilities are not All-the-time useable.   Drag only lasts 4 seconds...  It's not like we can sit there and just hit drag and the encounter is easy mode.   Drag is (Was) mostly used for simply repositioning mobs who get stuck in a bad position.   I know on the Zarakon fight, having drag would truly be useful, and considering that Zarakon doesn't mem-wipe at all I see no reason why not to allow it...

Aeralik did concede a bit on one panel at fan faire that these abilities shoudl at least be useable on trash....   And while I agree with that... I will flat out say that is not good enough.   Most named mobs need to be affected by these abilities also.   It should be only special cases where mobs have immunity to our class defining spells. 

  If I can't use Drag and Divide and Conquer on raid nameds... well they might as well be changed to something else altogether.   They are only temps that help out for a short duration...  lets see them work like they did in RoK, where only a FEW raid mobs had immunity.  

Crabbok@The Bazaar wrote:

If I can't use Drag and Divide and Conquer on raid nameds... well they might as well be changed to something else altogether.

IMO this is key.

Note to developers: if any ability is too powerful to use on any single encounter, the ability is too powerful and should not be given to players. Alter the ability instead of making mobs immune to it. This holds true for every possible effect in the game, on any single encounter in the game.

Another option would be to allow the skills to be used on raid named, but give an immune timer like stuns/stifles have now.  This way you couldnt lock down a mob for the full duration of the fight, but the skills could at least be useful.

I admit I was a bit frustrated everytime this came up at fanfaire, the answer was, thats a raid content quesiton and the person responsible wasn't there.

Aeralik tried to address it at Fan Faire.. though I think it's really not his responsibility, he did try to answer the question.  

   I just feel this issue needs more attention.  

Coercers are in the same boat.  Even though Thought Snap and Amnesia were frequently resisted, they occasionally saved the raid from a wipe.

Coercers have:

1) An EoF endline AA, Thought Snap, which is now 100% useless.
2) An ancient teaching, Amnesia, which is only usable in PvP.
3) An AA in the TSO Enchanter row which is useless.
4) An AA in our TSO Coercer row which is also useless.

I'm at the point now where, I don't care what they do, but do something:

1) Fix the abilities so that they work.
2) Replace the abilities with something else I can put on my hotbar.
3) Replace the AA's with something else we can use.

agressiv

Chiming in for Coercers.

What's even more sad is that mobs that previously WERE NOT IMMUNE to amnesia were changed to be.  Examples are a much of named in Shard of Hate.

Please.. please.  Change these abilities to be something remotely useful.  I'm going to say right now, that having them only useable on trash, while better than it is now, is simply not enough.  We've got 10 points in the TSO Shadows AA trees devoted to making Amnesia better.  Except it still doesn't work on anything.

Here are 2 ideas off the top of my head what Amnesia *could* be turned into.

Obvious change: It has a stun component to it already, so why not change it to stun, and then add the bullet point underneath which states "Removes all current hate from target - Does not affect some epic, boss, or heroic targets"

New Spell: Going with the whole Amnesia - making you forget theme - Change it to something like Countersong wherein the target of the spell "forgets" their next CA/Spell. Give it a long recast, something similar to Countersong (10 mins iirc) and a shorter duration (maybe 5 sec) so it's not a catch-all.. and the troubs don't rage out.

At the very least with option one, the spell would be useful pretty much all the time.  Option 2 is something new, and I know does have some issues.  But hey, at least it's an idea different than just another stun.

One more thing, off topic of Target Locking but still within the realm of Coercer-WTF's.

What's with more and more mobs becoming immune to Possess Essence?  Both Summoners and Illusionists don't get hosed by being unable to summon a pet.  Why do we get the shalf?  It's not like having an essence on something like Trakanon is imbalanced in the least.  I think that needs to be addressed as well.

The uselessness of "Cry of the Warrior" in TSO does make me /cry.

Immunities are highly annoying.  High resistance is better, in my opinion.

If an encounter can be "trivialized" with a single ability, you need to design a better encounter. Punishing players by making their abilities non-functional in the very situations where they would be most useful is heavy-handed and just plain mean. This is DMing 101, here.