I am not an int caster. I have a box wizard, but just for transportation. I main a cleric and rely now and always on melee DPS for the stuff I do. I have no "dog" in this particular "hunt." I was hoping to begin a conversation about int caster DPS. I have no idea how it's working at end game now, but in the OoW/DoN era, it is broken levels of terrible. It's to the point where most of our int casters have taken breaks or rolled up melee alts just to make it more interesting for them. Just to get an idea of what I'm talking about, here's some Tunat DPS comparisons, admittedly this is an ideal situation for melee, grouped with bard, shm, zerker, all with 2.0 clicks running, many with intensity, by comparison, the wiz only has all the best debuffs/foci/AA running as well: Monk: 2058 Monk (alt): 1838 Monk (alt): 1791 Monk (alt): 1774 Zerker (alt):1507 Zerker: 1408 Rogue (alt): 1380 Rogue: 1393 Rogue (alt): 1242 SK (alt): 1164 Ranger (alt): 875 Ranger (alt): 763 Warrior (alt): 843 Wizard: 725 This parse was carefully taken, the players were not told they were being parsed, they are all high-skill, believe me when I say that this is a typical parse, I can provide dozens of logs, we have a parse that looks about like this four or five times a night, six nights a week. I posted the best wizard parse we've gotten on a 275 hp/mana level loot mob in the past month. So this is the best-case scenario. When we still have a mage or necro show up, they do even worse. That wizard is the best-geared active wizard on the server right now, and we can determine no mistakes in order of casts, debuffs on the mob, spells chosen. Additionally, he seems to be riding the bleeding edge of what he can do based on tank aggro (our tank aggro right now is as high as is theoretically possible this era). So we don't think this is a "git gud" scenario. Some of the better wizards we've had could squeeze out a little more damage, but it was a fluke when they'd ever top the parse, and impossible to beat most melee on any fight of significance. Keep in mind that the people running these toons could manage top-parse numbers with regularity against VT mobs, in era, with MoTM nerfing pets and so forth. From 60 to 70, caster DPS went up by around 100%. The worst melee sees an improvement of 400%. Necros and mages have the same issue. It's worse in Anguish, at level 70, casting lures, on raid mobs debuffed by shm/enc/dru/epic clicks running, all AA's activated, it's not uncommon to be resisted twenty casts in a row, regardless of damage element type. Maybe this is how it's supposed to be, I can't imagine. I like playing with my friends though and I'm weary seeing them leave over something that seems so fixable. Are necro dots going to be adjusted like the other classes dots? when? Could we get the raid focus items buffed to bring up caster DPS? Could we see if something is broken with the level check on spell resists for direct damage spells? God bless anyone still playing an int caster.
There's nothing broken as far as level checks and things like that, that entire period just sucks for resists and casters. The entire level 70-75 period is just horrible for caster dps. Melee have those fancy AA changes that boosted their dps + cleave/fero added in + weapon damage going up faster than spell damage and you get this as a result. For wizards in particular if you don't have concussion pants from PoP then you'll be even further behind in dps. Casters on phinny have already gone this period with melee alts doing more damage AFK attacking vs. casters doing their best bursts/spell rotations. You won't see any real improvements until TSS, but even that doesn't catch casters up all the way. There is an odd fight here and there where you can burn frenzy aa if the fight is short enough and compete, but for the most part frenzy can't be used in any fights that don't end fast because it wastes too much mana. Currently in TBS I can sometimes top/come top 3 on some parses, but I'm doing it as one of the few wizards on the server with almost full bis mana augs from every previous expansion + a pocket bard to double up aria proc song + ench keeping mana flare up 24/7 + time bard epic clickys with my bursts. That and our best monks/rogues have been unlucky and not received 2 TBS weapons yet. Basically with the deck stacked heavily in my favour with better gear vs melee I can sometimes come top 3 or top. It's looking like you won't see casters reach closer to equal until maybe SoF, but we haven't reached that on Phinny yet so we don't know for sure if casters will even catch up in SoF or not.
twenty resists in a row seems a little much, are mobs in those raids not particularly vulnerable to one element or something?
Mages get a revolution in DoD with their gargoyle pet which will highly (in the good sense) impact their play style. But it won't impact the raid dps much, as said earlier, they become much better only in SoF era if you look at raw dps numbers. For a long time, zerkers, monks and rogues (and our beloived rainjas !) will outrank them (and most silkies) in almost any raid. From DoD onwards, however, they'll shine in the group game, the gargoyle gives them a bit of CC and allows them to take on harder mobs than before.
Yes, some raid mobs are almost completely invulnerable to some spell lines. (It shouldn't take anyone 20 casts to realize this.)
Yeah, they aren't exactly at necro levels of fundamentally broken, but I try to have empathy for other classes. It's nice that they got the malo buff.
