Entire VN Thread
So much of what you've read abour the convoker ML 2 is wrong. I dinged ML2 a few days ago, and last night was my first time I was able to go out in RVR and get a feel for Prescience Node. I would also like to add that I do have a hunter with True Sight, so it is interesting comparing TS to PN. Here is what I found:
Here's the facts:
1. 15 second cast time to place a node, must be standing still like any other spell.
2. 10 minute duration on node
3. 5 minute recast timer to place a second node
4. I'm not sure the actual range, I would guess a radius of 600-800 from center. So maybe 1200-1500 edge to edge. It's hard to say as it was not a controlled test. But my enemies were appearing well within my normal casting engage range.
5. Any stealthed enemies you see CANNOT be casted against. They cannot be targetted with F8. You must manually target them and must use melee to pop their stealth or wait for them to engage to break their own stealth. You could GTAE or PBAE, but not directly cast a spell against them. You could send a pet after them.
6. Having a node down will aggro any mob or enemy guard that walks through the area of effect
7. If any enemies or mobs are in the area of effect, you are considered in combat. This effects power regen rate, speed spells, and the ability to pop MCL.
8. The graphic for PN is this small little white swirl. It is not obvious from a distance. It is visible in the snow. If I were to have mythic change anything at all about this spell, I'd have them change the spell to a blue glowing ball that could be seen from clipping range. Word is that it has 1hp and can be attacked, but I never verified this.
9. PN remains placed if the caster logs or leaves the area. I think it remains effective for all realm mates but I can't say for sure.
Summary:
This is a good camping spell. This is not a good suprise spell of zooming up and finding everyone in the area. Your enemies have plenty of time to leave the area of effect while you are casting. Because you can't cast spells on the stealthed person, a pet class or a GROUP benefits from this spell more than most casters. This spell will rarely be used in DF due to the aggro consequences. This spell in no way makes stealth classes obsolete! But it does bring TICTACS into a stealther knowing what area he can enter and what he can't. Because of the slow cast time, this is a poor suprise spell, and as I said, if there could be one thing to balance this ability, it would be to make it more obvious from outside of range that this was running. If mythic changed that frankly I don't know what a reasonable stealther would complain about. I don't even think the ability to constantly run two nodes is all that big a deal.
Experiences:
1. Emain:
First I ran solo out to the MMF emain and laid one down. Nothing there. Then I hooked up with a skald friend and we ran over to amf after the five minute recast timer was up. We zoomed up and I began the slow slow cast of this thing. I would like to reiterate that this has a 15 second cast time during which I am expecting to get PA'd at any time. You cannot zoom up and suprise someone unless they are not paying attention. So anyway, I cast the thing, and after about a 2 second delay we see an inf about 4 feet from us moving at me. I started to move and he got his PA off, but my moving screwed up the subsequent CD so I avoided the stun and sure death. Fighting the inf, a scout popped on his own to join in. It was a fun fight overall two versus two. I was the sole survivor and running back to mpk I laid another at mmf and nothing was there.
2. Uppland gates:
Stealthers love to camp Uppland gates on Merlin. So I ran out from gates and laid one down at the crossroads in front. After 5 minutes I laid a second down spread out a little and just hung out. Every 5 minutes from there one node would fade and I'd recast to keep 2 nodes going. There was an inf down the road killing people, but he avoided the crossroads so he never came into play. During this time, every single grey mob in the area was charging me as they agroe'd from this thing. I was ungrouped, and another ungrouped zerk was there hanging out with me. After 20 minutes or so, a couple of niteshades came to visit stealthing towards us. This was the first test of someone walking into the area of effect and it was pretty cool. I would guess they appeared at about 800 units, and I tried to get an AE root off to start out but I could not cast spells against them. The zerker charged one and began melee, and the second kept stealthing towards me. Because I couldn't cast any spells on him I did a run-by to get off a pbae disease and again got PA'd but not the follow up stun. We then had a two on two fight where they did not have the element of suprise and the zerk tore them up.
3. Bledmeer. Taking an enemy keep then defending the courtyard.
Albs had a couple of our keeps so we headed out. We came to a lightly defended Bled and attacked. At the start of the siege I placed a PN at the bottom of one of the front climb points. There were a few drawbacks to doing this. First every guard that popped immediately aggroe'd on me before others. But more significantly, having enemies in the area of effect kept me in combat for power regen reasons. I regened power at the rate of being in combat, and I couldn't pop MCL the whole time we were there which was about 30 minutes all told. After we got D1 down, 4 groups of albs rolled up from behind so we had to defend the courtyard while trying to take down D2. I placed a second PN at the other front climb point so we had both covered. Again when I'd see infs or minstrels coming over I could not cast spells on them. But it was nice to be able to avoid getting PA'd. This was where I appreciated PN the most, to have some defense against getting PA'd on the walls while trying to defend a keep. The guards that were popping were friendly to the Infs so I don't know if PN allows a guard to aggro on the exposed stealthers.
Editorial:
This spell is nowhere near as bad as all the hysterical stealthers are claiming. True Sight is a much better "suprise" spell in that it is insta-cast and you can move around and search. PN is a better camping spell. With the slow slow cast time of PN, any stealther can move outside of 1000 units from the caster before the spell is done being cast. This spell will almost never be used in DF so won't affect stealthers there. This spell is great for camping mileforts or keeps. But camping mileforts is a good way to get zerged from behind in my experience. And at keeps you would need at least two PN classes placing nodes every 5 minutes to keep all the climb points covered. This will largely allow you to see incoming stealthers and would require them to have some tactics. We will see experienced stealthers in the future team up to have one stealther drop a node, and another stealther go after the node caster.
Stealthers, you are not obsolete, and all of you complaining that this one ability makes it so you can't do your job is bull. Casters have to face interupts. Melee has to face CC. Mezzers have to face determination or recast timers. My shaman is completely unable to do a darn thing if someone sticks a pet on me. Every ability in the game should have a counter. Stealth has been 99.9% effective forever which in my mind was too effective. Thats not to say your classes don't have issues, but the 99.9% effectiveness of stealth was not the solution. That just allowed you more freedom to solo without fear than any other class. Welcome to our world. Now when you approach a milefort, you will have to wonder if a PN is there. Now you will have to listen to the cg just like the rest of us to know what area's to avoid. And yes, sometimes you will need to zerg it up to get through a PN bottleneck. I personally have always enjoyed solo RVR with my shaman. But if I was ever to die to a couple of infs camping a milefort the reply from these board would have been "cry more noob. Get tactics. Don't expect to solo with complete safety". Well now the same applies to you. The best stealthers will not even hardly be affected by this. But the flavor of the month leet gankers will cry because they can't attack anyone they want with impunity.
I truly believe the best of the assassins and archers will hardly be affected by this, and certainly not made obsolete. But the lazy milefort campers.... You guys may have issues.
) on for a few days till they realize this isn't as big a deal as they might think.
