Let's discuss Sorcery DPS (might). Not only the power, but it's synergy with Artifacts specifically designed for it. Those artifacts include Source Shard, Grimorium Verum, and to a lesser extent, Dead King's Scepter. The main issue to discuss is Sorcery's consistency. Let's try breaking it down by the different parts where inconsistency tends to happen. 1st category of DPS: Projectiles - These are abilities such as Shard Of Life, Soul Storm, and Soul Barrage. There are more, however for their purpose, these are the most important. All three provide a decent amount of AOE damage; depending on whether or not they hit the target. There is a noticeable chance they will miss, which will net you a damage loss of zero. INSTANTLY. Simply put, the reason they are inconsistent and lackluster, is because they are too slow. Many different aspects and mechanics happen often in game that are counter-productive to projectiles as a whole. Some examples include adds being CC'ed quickly into another direction, a boss (Grail) lunging halfway across the map, or adds being defeated before your projectiles even land. When you use most of these abilities, there is about a 1 second pause before the damage actually registers. In that one second, a lot can happen. 2nd category of DPS: Pets - Pets, an essential part of almost all DPS rotations. For powers like Sorcery and Earth, that necessity is even more dire as these powers were DESIGNED to be pet-maximized builds. They have abilities (Offering / Fortify Golem) that are meant to accurately buff them to be in line with other powersets. Unfortunately, the consistency issue continues with Sorcery's pet because it's projectile-based as well! Fury (dps pet) has two main hard-hitting attacks. One with the same animation as Transmutation, and another that resembles Soul Storm. Out of the two, the former hits nearly every time as it is an almost instant animation that doesn't travel to reach the enemy, but simply appears right above them and damages. The latter struggles to hit a target in any content with a fast environment (especially elite). Fury also has Hand Blaster-based attacks that do pretty passive damage. As Fury can't jump cancel or clip, the animations will obviously take noticeably longer to finish. We will touch more on this in the following section(s). Now, let's hop to the artifacts for a minute. Source Shard - At rank 200 you receive the best benefit which is 200% extra damage to 3 pets for 5 seconds. You MUST place an ability (Godwave Strength) on your loadout to activate this affect. And to reset it early from it's 18 second CD you MUST spam superpowers. The problem with this is, it's very limiting in the sense of what you have left over for a loadout. Godwave Strength also has inconsistency in the sense that you could have it pop up 3 times in 2 seconds, but instead of being able to press it and EXTEND the duration, it only allows you to reset the duration. This seems counter-productive. If you've "fished for that cooldown reset" as the devs put it, you SHOULD be given every second of it's buff. Grimorium Verum - At rank 160 you receive the best benefits, which is a power-specific PI to all targets nearby one target and a 2 second beam of damage from a permanent Void Gazer pet. The 200 bonus which stops pets from reducing your power generation has no actual difference in damage from your pet. However at 200 you do get the extra 1% increase in dps for might. Dead King Scepter - To a lesser extent, this artifact synergizes with a pet-build. At rank 160 it reduces the cooldown of your pet trinkets (Dark Construct Bat, Henchmen, etc.) by 10%. It's one of those artifacts where it's a bit harder to test as the chances of getting more use out of it is dependent on the content you are running. Now let's talk about some of the pet-maximized builds you can have. For that we would need a combination of the artifacts Grimorium Verum, Source Shard, Dead King's Scepter, and a pet-designed power (Sorcery / Earth). With this setup your loadout is AT MINIMUM going to have Godwave Strength, Offering, and Summon Fury. That leaves you with three slots left for AOE / ST situations. Keep in mind, you also have to have a constant use of one or more spammable abilities, as Godwave Strength requires you to permanently use superpowers if you want it to have a chance at resetting. So now, we're really down to two free slots on our loadout. One would think the supercharge Grand Summoning would be the way to go right? Wrong. Since Source Shard only allows three pets to get the buff, Grand Summoning will most likely not get to use this ability. You have Fury, Void Gazer, and Trinket Pets that you have to use. There's no room for Grand Summoning. Not that you would want to run it anyway, as it's not really been updated or scaled to the current game. Next, you're thinking a channeled ability like heat vision or a finisher? Not necessarily. Subsequent ticks from those abilities DO NOT count towards resetting the CD. How about combos? Nope! Say you have all your pets out. You've got Godwave Strength up and you're ready to see your pets do some awesome damage, right? Well, maybe. See, as I stated earlier, there will be times where Fury is in animation, whether it be from attacks like Hand Blaster's Pulse Beam, or it's simply taking a few seconds pause. The other pets (void gazer, pet trinkets) do this as well. So if you use Godwave Strength and they're at that part of their coding/AI, they're going to waste your Godwave Strength. Also you'd better hope your buffed Fury's projectiles don't miss. Cause if they do, guess what, you've just lost damage from Godwave Strength, Offering, AND Fury. Three in one, killer! Let me be clear. Relying on Pets to do damage is going to yield inconsistent results. The damage needs to be slightly modified and buffed to reflect that. The risk for running this does not have a reward. This setup of a maximized pet-build will not out-damage or even keep up with other artifact / dps playstyle combinations. You have to also keep in mind Pets do not receive any buffs from outside sources. They do not crit either. Developer Notes: Fury should be behind other powerset pets damage wise when you do nothing to buff it. However, should you apply "Bad Karma" power interaction and use Offering, this should be the best DPS pet (along with Crystal) available. That was taken from Batuba in the initial powerset balance thread here https://forums.daybreakgames.com/dcuo/index.php?threads/gu-103-powerset-pet-dps-balance.307830/ I'm not really sure how this adds up? Gadgets, Earth, and Sorcery are all designed to have pet-specific builds that do not focus around Robot Sidekick. If they use their respective pets for the designated roles, they should be either meeting the standard of RSK or excelling. Not only that, but if you have to apply Offering (a non-clippable, non-damaging move), to buff your pet, that pet should be doing not only enough damage to make up for that loss, but also enough to make up the potential loss of having 2 LESS loadout slots and the inconsistencies with pets in general. Another great thread to look through is the actual Source Shard Testing Feedback Thread https://forums.daybreakgames.com/dcuo/index.php?threads/gu103-source-shard-artifact.307965/ In both cases, the threads were locked even though it seemed discussion had not yet been finished. As an Elite-level player, I can see this Pet-Maximized Build being competitive and definitely worth an investment, but only if changes are made to fix the inconsistencies that plague Sorcery. I'm not going to lie, I don't run numbers in spread-sheets or do other excessive math equations to the level that other players do, so these are somewhat spit-balled. But I do run parses, elite-level gameplay, and am aware, as I'm sure some of you are as well, of what's performing well and what isn't. Anyways, on to possible fixes! Increase Fury's Base Damage by a percent base, starting from 1% to 10% Increase Fury's Damage based on Bad Karma PI Godwave Strength at 200 could have an added feature, the 3rd pet is nice, but they are only up half the cooldown (possibly a chance to refresh pet's power or to crit) Reduce the number of / re-program Fury's slower weapon-based attacks Activating Godwave Strength should instantly command Fury to empty his power bar Allow the ability to extend and not restart the duration of GWS if it becomes available off CD Change Grand Summoning to be role-specific? Pulls out 3 Furies and no other pets. Below is a video playlist of my experience of running with a Pet-Centric DPS build of Source Shard + Grimorium Verum + Dead King's Scepter. In all of these videos, slow it down to .50x and keep your eye on my pets and my projectile based powers on my loadout. In some videos you will notice my loadout projectiles missing, in some you will notice Fury missing (while wasting my buff). In even more, you will see my pets sitting there doing nothing while GWS is active, essentially wasting it. These are the inconsistencies that need to be addressed. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEhGQninuamnR_9e8aJUAg91ctuEimqiz I'm looking forward to meaningful and on-topic discussion about what everyone thinks.
Can't say I hate any of the ideas. I'm not sure I could do scepter over all the other choices tho. And can't agree that gs is a bad choice. The newest elite, pets are clutch. Aside from the distance they attack, so many parts where we have to stop dps'n but pets don't. And as far as powers missing their target, that's every powerset. Which is why I run la mort/ finisher. Never misses since it locks on. The .5 blast is the only other power I use.
While I wouldn't mind getting some more damage, I get the feeling that anything done to sorcery/ source shard will result in a nerf eventually. The only results I have on hand are for an almost completed fgse with 3 tries at grail and 2 at Zues, the last attempt failed literally at the end. I know there were 2 players that have topped me before in the group but they were playing roles this time around. When they have topped me, it was kinda minimal. Also, our 4th dps was going in and out of tank role so I didn't include him since his numbers were obviously lower. Overall: Me: 214,952,896 DpsA: 218,333,958 DpsB: 199,230,983 Single target Me: 106,729,611 DpsA: 94,500,639 DpsB: 73,773,704 I've been in a lot of instances using this loadout/ arti combo and it pretty much always looks exactly like this. I'll top st and be mid pack of overall. If there's an eog spam and a troll using bop uplink, my numbers go up rather significantly. This was a power/ debuff troll run with a pretty constant eog but not a nature spam fest. I'm sure you're committed to the uplink arti thing but I'd swap for something that has it's own "build" capability. So while you're running a source shard build, you have another build happening. I've been happiest with la mort since it doesn't miss and crits high 50ks often. I've used the scrap before so I could use gs more often and it was lower in some content but thinking it would have shined in fgse. My amulet is sitting at the 120 break thru so I may slot that in place of la mort full time but the part no one looks at on the scoreboard that I think is most important: I did these results while taking the least damage and having the lowest power costs by a large margin. So I literally never need a troll to do my max amount of damage. While I also love a pet builds results, I think you may just be too heavily built for pets. If you're worried about projectiles hitting, then that means you're using a few. Without adding a different 3rd artifact, even trans or tetra, you aren't giving those powers any extra kick.
Dead King's Scepter was only mentioned as it has a recognizable synergy with Source Shard and Grimorium Verum. It could be omitted from this entire thread as it's not a true pet artifact, it just happens to have a feature that slightly benefits them. Godwave Strength isn't a bad choice. It's only bad when you have to take up a space on your loadout and expect it to properly and consistently transfer damage to your pet, only for Fury to be stuck in a part of it's AI where it does nothing, or for Fury to miss the target completely. Your point about pets being able to DPS during mechanics which prevent players from only happens for a fraction of the time of the raid. Let's create a scenario here. Say we're fighting Grail. She does her reflecting bracers a total of ten times. Every DPS who is running RSK (which is usually all), will still be doing damage. Fury is not special in this regard. But let's say you have Fury AND Void Gazer. The "powerful beam" ticks that Void gazer does equate to about 2-3k damage for each tick. Let's say for argument's sake, you have GWS up during the reflection phase. Void Gazer gets 5 seconds of 200% increased damage, so now it's hitting about 10k. Ok now, let's say both pets somehow manage to do 100k damage during that phase, and the phase happens a total of 10 times throughout the fight. That's about a 1 mill bonus over anyone NOT using RSK, Void Gazer and any other pets. That 1 mill damage is not going to put you ahead of DPS who are running artifacts that are netting them more damage BEFORE this point. Really, all you're doing is trying to play catch up and hoping pets can put out a significant number of damage when DPS has to stop. And they're not catching up. And to your last point, every power having abilities that miss. That COULD be true, however, none of them have it to the degree of Sorcery. That's because it's a majority of it's design is based on projectiles. Thus, the problem is exacerbated with Sorcery. Most powers, you press a button, and the damage registers as long as the enemy is within range and you are locked on. That is not the case with Sorcery, and it's creating inconsistency. The youtube link should be up now. The fixes I mentioned, some are easier to incorporate and should in no way lead to a nerf. One fix (buff Fury's base damage, starting from 1%), that's pretty miniscule right? It's a simple change, but one hopefully in the right direction. Overall damage is important when considering artifacts. Source Shard is not Single Target or AOE only, as such it should be showing competitive damage in both scenarios if you choose to invest in it. If you're doing decent single target, but lagging behind to middle or less overall damage repeatedly, there's a problem. Either with your loadout or with the powers/artifacts. I am not committed to the Uplink device, and do not agree with the sentiment that I should have to rely on a troll running it to get good damage. It's not a good troll artifact compared to literally almost every other one. Trust me, I've got a troll and ran with it at 200, only to scrap it for something better. It's more annoying and requires a lot of work to maintain for so little return. I had the pleasure of running with a controller running BOP commlink. I STILL was not able to out-dps my other Elite-ready dps friends.
I agree about the inconsistency of the projectiles but have found ways to play around that issue. 1, like I said, the finisher locks on. So until the group of adds are stacked on the tank, I'm not going to use anything that might miss. So pop gw, feed fury, la mort finisher. By then, tanks rounded them up. Then it's time for quick blast or whatever. I can only think of a few powers that can miss but sorcery does have a few that can't miss like transmutation. I'm not arguing your points, just listing ways to do well without those powers btw. But they would have to make these powers "heat seekers" to always go to the target. Like in any other game, sometimes you miss. My other toon is rage. He misses with melee or range constantly. Like e chain probably hits the combo 70% of the time and that's being gracious. The double mace attack combo, 1st one almost never hits unless already into 2nd rotation. And for fury, does yours really miss that much? I'd say mine hits 90% of the time how I want him to. But I watch closely so it's always a perfect application. And finally, for the grail scenario: that's why I said don't go with just a pet build. Usually during reflect, not the add part, I'll have grim fury bat construct out. Pop gw and those 3 are tearing her up vs maybe some other players also have pets. Lately, grail is reflecting every 30secs for us. Like literally, counting 30 to 40secs between them. If the adds are out, then fury grim and gs are going even while she's reflecting. It may not be much but it all adds up. And when it isn't, that's what the 3rd artifact is for. But mechanic heavy instances, source is fantastic. I just sit in the corner and feed my pets. I play alllll sorts of lazy lol
I mean.. I would just prefer they fix sorcery. Even if they did do that, it would need to affect Fury as well or else we're still having problems.
So yet another question that I cant ask without sounding dbaggy... How are you deciding that sorcery needs more damage? Like you vs the same friends, you vs anyone, or just random runs and not being top dps? I'm asking because I see all these posts asking for buffs/ nerds and sometimes it's artifact related, sometimes it isn't. So how can anyone say something isn't doing enough/ too much? Wouldn't we have to be on test and using the same person with the same sp/augs/no artifacts using same power cost powers and all that? Are you trying to improve it's overall damage or its single target? I get that you're asking for shots fired to land, it's understandable but like I said, you shoot a weapon in almost any game and there's a chance it misses its target. Even weapon attacks in this game don't always make contact. Again, not against anything you've said so far just wondering how people decide that a power needs work. They have been working on power balances and rumor mill says they are continuing with help from a few select players so I'm sure sorcery has stuff in store. I'm just thinking it's going to get more nerds than buffs if they do
It's fine to ask these questions! Let me give you a little more information to work with! I have two DPS toons. 321 CR Mental DPS 500 + SP, Artifacts - 200 Solar, Tetra, Trans, Strat, Claw 317 CR Sorcery DPS 450+ SP, Artifacts - 200 Source Shard, 160 Grimorium, 160 Scrap, 160 Eye, 160 Dead King's Scepter I am lucky to have a close friend who I've know in-game for 7+ years. We are always striving to do better, no matter the role. We work together constantly, testing different setups, powers, and playstyles, whether it be on test server, live, or elite. We run Elite non-stop and ALWAYS compete for top spot. We do not get out-dpsed often, if ever. Our single target AND AOE damage are always well-balanced. After DPS'ing so much on my main, I got bored and started playing with my healer (317 alt) and turned it into a DPS. Obviously, the 200 difference from 160 CAN make a difference, however for pets, there are no artifacts besides Source Shard that benefit your pets at 200. Grim's power regen bonus at 200 is not something I've had to get as I don't struggle with Power, and as I stated, it does not directly affect the pet's damage. So, I run with the same Elite-level players. We run with other top dps players and are aware who they are. Any of them who have an idea of what the current meta is (usually Strat + Trans + Grim / Solar / Amulet), and have ran test parses, will outdps my Source Shard build, no problem. I'm working a lot harder to stay competitive, hoping that by spamming non-stop I will receive the benefits of GWS. But it's just awkward, the timing of it all. And as a Pet-spec build, I'm also punished more heavily in the sense that if my Pets die or I do, I have to resummon them. And as you know, the trinket pets have cool-downs and I can lose a significant portion of damage from that. Basically, most powers have self-directed, constant means of doing damage, while also being buffed from outside forces. Pets have no such abilities. So certain pets / powers / artifacts need to be re-adjusted, and I cannot stress this enough, in a more productive way. Also, when practicing on sparring targets, I often compare and contrast the abilities of one power to another, that includes single target, AOE, SC's, and any other comparable features.
Haha ok cool. Sorry, had to ask. Have been a lot of posts lately and asking for buffs "bcuz not top bernz" and then find out they're comparing themselves to 30cr higher maxed out players with 500sp. Personally I don't think anything can touch a trans/strat/amulet or solar build right now except maybe tetra/amulet/trans and the iconic movement tree. It's possible that sorcery could be a "tops" with that setup. I'm not on test so idk and they haven't implemented my artifact rental idea yet lol. I've got no argument against the awkwardness of a pet build. I have no rotation. It's almost impossible to run parsers because I have different pets out at different times. You know how it is. Are you on USPSPC? Would be cool to comparo. So far, I've only ever been challenged to a dps comp from other powers lol. Not that I'm looking to start a fight but maybe if some sorcery users got together in game, we would be able to spit ball ideas and try different things all together.
I don't mind running in-game with you. I can setup an Elite raid with some leaguemates and we could both run our rotations as Sorcery and see what is going on. My leaguemates and I have been noticing my dps going from first to last everytime I switch to my dps toon, so it'll be nice to see where other Sorcery players are sitting. I am USPC. What's your in-game name? Also, I think it'd be great to see how we'll both compare to some of my leaguemates / friends who usually are all in close range of first place overall.
My sorcery is Azraihell. Add me and let me know, almost done with renown thankfully but I'll happily run thru it even if I'm done by then.
