I have started playing recently again on hib, I took about a year break and leveled an enchanter on hib. I was surprised to find that focus shield was nerfed so severely bad. What was the reasoning for this and why nerfed so badly that it's almost useless now? At least to me it seems useless. I dont know a single person that uses it. Was one of my favorite ways to farm lol. Any insight would be great on this!
Thanks
It wasn't nerfed it was adjusted. Devs made a "mistake" in the code and made the focus shield too strong. With that fix they made it to the damage it was supposed to be.
This was starting to be abused in RvR. Making it nearly impossible for melees to attack pets in Raids, especially a Necro pet who used focus shield and started to bomb.
On Midgard with spiritmaster at low lvl 10-25:
- Solo I can take 3 mobs at a time, but i have long downtime, its faster with a tinder.
-- Exp is way inferior to pbaoe spec in group
-- Farming of task item is not good because of the 2-min timer.
- Grouped with 1-2 healers I cannot take more than 5-6 mobs because I have to wait to take damage for healers not to draw aggro, and pet life/buffs are too low to make it possible.
- Exp is good, but healers are needed in full groups, and would have better exp.
On Albion with cabalist at low lvl 10-18:
- Never worth, cabalist pet and dot make it never worth it compared to dot kitting 1mob at a time with turret pet.
- Starting with lvl 18 aoedot is always better
On Albion with necro at medium lvl 20-45:
- Downtime is too high until you have 100% tinder uptime, MCL2 and Pom Pots
- Solo its hard to make it worth compared to chaining with DeathSight
- With Cleric full buff same issue as on Midgard, pet is not strong enough to take many mobs (6+).
Overall I'd say that on both Mid and Alb focus shield is sub-par with other specs on the focus classes, it could benefit from a buff at low to medium lvls 10-45.
You wouldn't want to buff the pet health, as it would benefit grouped focus pulling, and would remove healers from the pool of LFG players.
What you'd need to buff is the mana cost of the spell (lower it) and put a bonus to solo exp rate. (not eggs because it would buff aoedot too much) The main problem with focus pulling solo is what mobs you are fighting (somewhat looks like this):
-1 orange
- 1 yellow and 1 blue
- 3 blue
- 2 blue and 2 greens
- 6 greens
If you compare with aoedot:
- 3 oranges
- 10 yellow
- Infinite blue and greens
So we can't make blue and greens give eggs.
We can't boost eggs.
The only thing I would see benefiting focus pulling would be to buff task items.
What I would do is make task item drop two versions every 2 minutes: - the usual version
- an untradeable version, account-bound like feathers (so you can only use while leveling, for your account)
Call them the same but with the name "Bound" before.
Thanks for all of the replies everyone. I still think that something needs to be changed about it. I have no idea in what direction but it seems useless on each of the 3 realms