Wizards

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by SonOfABiscuit, Mar 21, 2020.

  1. Badname3245 Lorekeeper

    We have one good wizard and three that are way behind. The good one says he constantly adjusts based on whats going on. The others play the same always. No matter his results or how he tries to help they do not want to adapt. Preferring to stick with how they have played for years with a poorer result and then not being happy about it.
    menown likes this.
  2. kizant Augur

    If one person can do something then most people can. You can't balance around what some people just haven't figured out yet. There should be limits on just how good the best player can be because if even only 1 out of a million can figure out how to be OP that's still too many.

    People don't believe me but wizards aren't a simple class to play and I'd prefer it stay that way. The last thing we should want is to dumb things down to 1 mash key and a click/disc rotation like some classes.

    That doesn't mean wizards don't need any improvements and I never said that I could beat zerkers in a sustained fight. I'd lose to them, an SK/war tank, and mages pretty badly. But that doesn't mean our DPS is terrible and being top DPS in a 5 hour xp group has never been our thing. Ever.
    code-zero, RPoo, Sancus and 1 other person like this.
  3. Zaknaffein Augur

    I don't know what all the fuss is about, all classes are perfectly balanced at the moment.
    Maedhros, RPoo and kizant like this.
  4. Renotaki Elder

    As always, class balance is tricky because classes are going to perform considerably differently depending on raid makeup, group makeup, and how well the support classes are doing (hitting the right stuff, doing it in good coordination with the one you are testing parses with etc.) I'm not sure if we are still too early in an expansion to discuss class balance as it stands but I'll give my opinion anyway. I think wizard raid sustained is actually pretty solid right now with the proper support. Maybe our short term burns could still be a little better because it's my opinion that wizard burst should be the best around, but maybe i'm biased.

    In fact, I feel like our burst *potential* with support is comparatively better off this expansion vs the last one but It's likely not quite up to snuff with the likes of a Zerker in TOV. I stress the word potential because 60 second parses for wiz are very reliant on things like Enchanter Chromatic Haze and Synergy stacking, as well as getting lucky with extra ethereals from Confluence and Arcane fusion procs. Here's two parses from a burst fight at the start and a sustained parse from the entire event. I have all my new proc augs and having intensity and Staunch recovery was great. My relevant spells are RK. III and I have focus upgrades and a new staff.

    /GU Koldan Wallbreaker in 61s, 124.3m @2037706 | #1 Renotaki + pets 124.3m@(2,037.7k in 61s
    /GU Combined: Narandi the Restless in 1350s, 931.6m @690095 | #1 Renotaki + pets 931.6m@(690.1k in 1350s) {7}

    Group was wiz, bard, dru, ench, mage, mage.

    Also, if curious, me default battle timeout for these DPS values is 24 seconds. I've been thinking about how some may cut the value down considerably from it's default 30. Depending on how far you go will make the displayed battle time and DPS change of course so it's worth mentioning when comparing people.

    Crit rate was 92.6% for the running event. I mention this because I'm in a really lucky position as a wizard because we have six rangers in our guild on a normal raid night. That really helps out our crit rate. Wizards get very big gains off of Auspice. We have a lot of crit damage mods, so the potential is there once you get the crit chance support. Auspice timing could be a bit better (at least "better" for my selfish reasons like my own parse. I.E. What's running in my group when spice comes out) but I'm lucky enough to have a group and a raid that always works with me to help me parse high. I bring this up because wizards don't always get the luxury of getting so much say in how ADPS is handled in a raid/ group. A lot of wizards won't even have full support- and that matters a lot.

    As others have said, wizards struggle to do what melee classes and others can do in group content grinds. We run OOM, and we lean very heavily on the ADPS of other classes to an extent in raids (all of the mana return/ preservation skills, crit chance, crit damage, extra procs, debuffs etc.) It all really adds up. I've tried going up against the melee classes in group content and it's definitely a much bigger struggle when i'm at it alone without support. The dps can be similar, but then I'll need to med and they get to keep at it forever. My biggest pet peeve about group sustained is how much it relies on Stormjolt Vortex's debuff. If it gets resisted right off the bat on a new mob then it can body your damage on that mob vs most other classes very easily. That's why even debuffs like Malo from Mages are huge because it increases the chance to land Stormjolt so much.

    It's up for debate if wizards even should be the best group sustained damage without support. I'd be happy with seeing issues with our AEs be fixed and a slight increase on burst again. That's just me. As always, class balance is highly dependent on perspective and situations, even when comparing something simple like dps classes vs dps classes. This is a level increase expansion, and wizards got big base damage increases on Claw and ethereals, and (kinda) WIldflash. Not so much the other spells. We won't be getting that solid base damage boosts to spells next expansion. I wonder how everything will look next year, considering we are already really close to melee in some ways on a level increase where wizards got big gains in some regards.
    Scornfire likes this.
  5. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    I've found a lot of wizzys don't go for proc augs or items, which isn't doing themselves any favours at all.
  6. ShadowMan Augur

    2 million burst and almost 700 for over twenty minutes and more than half this thread claim wizards are in a bad place and need help?
  7. Coronay Augur

    Its pretty good when you have the support of a full raid behind you and perfect group make up. I think a lot of the concern is coming from that outside of raids, these numbers are not representative to what wizards are doing day to day in non-ideal groups.
    Coagagin and Renotaki like this.
  8. ShadowMan Augur

    And there are others who can't do that even with the full support of the raid. And lots more who can't do what you do without any support. Everyone has a downside, no one seems to accept that anymore.
  9. Szilent Augur

    this is a questionable assertion
  10. Maedhros High King

    When I started ROTE in 2015 during TDS all the stars aligned and we had this unbelievable caster crew. I was running 3 solid groups of casters, sometimes 4, with so many stud dps'ers and of course back then caster dps was supreme. I think we had 7 wizzies on the roster, 10 mages, 4 or 5 chanters, 2 or 3 necros...
    We would do Arx raids and to see a melee in a top 10 on the parse was just not something that happened.
    Then nerfs happened.
    Casters quit.
    Several expansions with no level increase, no new spells...
    Melee weapons got stronger and stronger.
    Casters became stagnant and comparatively weaker.
    Casters quit.
    More nerfs happened.
    Casters quit.
    ROS opens with a level increase and new spells. Casters rejoice.
    Casters still outshone by melee dps.
    Casters quit.
    TBL opens, melee get even stronger.
    TOV opens with a level increase, casters should be strongest with new spells.
    Melee still dominate.

    Frankly its effed up. During a level increase expansion casters should dominate the hell out of melee. And then the next year with no level increase the melee should catch up with their new weapons. The following year with no level increase the melee should shine the most. Then the next year there should be another level increase and the cycle continues.
    That 2nd year of a certain level should be fantastic. You should see casters and melee able to achieve very similar numbers and really duke it out. We just do not see it.
    Elyssanda, FubarEQ, Coagagin and 5 others like this.
  11. Renotaki Elder

    I think it's certainly a lot harder to top a parse now as a wizard than it was in TDS (but this was much more so the case from EOK to TBL, where wizards were not doing so hot at all). It might seem strange to say, but all those classes being better than wiz for a few years there (or just stronger comparatively vs.TDS caster quest) made me a better player over all. I had to think really hard about how to do better. At least personally as a player I think it was beneficial because I hate losing lol
    Maedhros likes this.
  12. kizant Augur

    I wouldn't conflate caster issues with Wizard issues and idea that melee outshone Enchanters or Mages during RoS is kinda funny.
    Sancus and Maedhros like this.
  13. Renotaki Elder

    The classes I'm primarily referring to in RoS that were doing really well vs wizards were the non-wizard casters heh and the priests (shamans and druids) before the nerf happened . Of course the classes that where doing better changed with the expansions. But I can't speak for others
  14. Beimeith Lord of the Game

    That a Wizard can hold 300k while AEing & keeping all burn abilities on cooldown is NOT good.


    My warrior (with TBL raid weapons/Max AA etc.) can sustain ~250-300k dps autoattacking a single target without adps.

    My SK (without raid weapon, not Max AA yet) can sustain ~150k dps autoattacking a single target without adps. I fully expect him to beat the warrior once he is maxed AA and gets a raid weapon.

    Berserkers I've seen sustain 300k on single targets but idk what they were doing. (My own berserker is far from ready for prime time).


    In a group with just a warrior, paladin, Beastlord and cleric merc you should have been 50% of the DPS or more, not 25%.

    A pure dps class (Wizard, Rogue, Berserker, Monk) should never just be equal to a tank, especially when the pure dps class is using everything on cooldown while the tanks aren't.
    Mithra, Travestii, Riou and 2 others like this.
  15. kizant Augur

    Tanks doing too much is an issue that effects all DPS classes. It would be easier to just nerf them.
  16. SonOfABiscuit Augur

    You're missing the point. Also, it's affects, not effects.
  17. kizant Augur

    Then be specific in your point. Just whining about wizards being bad isn't helpful.
  18. Beimeith Lord of the Game

    Not who you were replying to of course, but I will be specific. (Also, I wasn't trying to be disparaging to you in my original post, I was just trying to explain why numbers that might seem to be good to another class actually aren't).

    The biggest problem is the huge disparity between a crit and a non-crit. It's the difference between:

    This:
    [Tue Mar 24 21:40:34 2020] You hit Combat Dummy Izah for 219462 points of fire damage by Ethereal Brand Rk. III.

    And this:
    [Tue Mar 24 21:40:46 2020] You hit Combat Dummy Izah for 648578 points of fire damage by Ethereal Brand Rk. III. (Critical)
    For reference, both of those are with no adps and no burns of any kind.

    A crit is approximately x3 the damage of a non-crit. (Technically speaking, our passive crit mod is 440%, but you have to subtract out the normal hit, which includes mods that don't crit like focus).

    This equates to ‭65,025.8 and ‭192,171.3 DPS respectively.

    On a self-only burn (with glyph) this crit mod goes from x3 to x4.3, and that same nuke becomes 954,248 damage. (Note that I'm not counting any mods besides crit damage here).
    On a burn with Druid+Chanter+Bard ADPS, this disparity becomes wildly more pronounced as our crit mod becomes x5.5 instead of x3. That same nuke becomes 1,199,369 damage. (Again, only crit mod here).

    • 220k / 65k dps (non-crit)
    • 650k / 193k dps (crit)
    • 950k / 281k dps (self burn crit)
    • 1.2m / 356k dps (adps burn crit).
    One way to address this would be to massively increase the amount of normal focus effect (124) which affects base damage but not crit damage.

    If they added something like 400% focus, the effect it would have on those numbers would be to add ‭294,120‬ / ‭87,146.7 dps ‬to each line:

    • 514k / 152k dps (non-crit) +134%
    • 918k / 272k dps (crit) +41%
    • 1248k / 370k dps (self burn crit) +31%
    • 1493k / 442k dps (adps burn crit) +24%
    As you can see by the %-change, it primarily affects non-crits much more than crits. This would *partially* close the gap between crits and not crits, with the majority of the gain being for group play where adps is less available than raids.

    Note: To be clear here, when referring to the % change numbers, this does not reflect OVERALL dps increases. I've vastly simplified the math here and left out a large number of mods that affect overall damage on a burn to focus on crits specifically. On a full adps burn on a raid a Wizard can break 1-1.5 million or more depending on the raid (still less than melee but that's another topic).

    Adding 87k dps to a burn of 1m is only a 9% increase in raid burn DPS. The damage from this theoretical change is almost entirely on the "front-end" of the scale. It affects non-crits massively (+133%), but actual bonuses to a burn crit is <10%.

    OR

    The same effect could be generated with a flat +damage modifier like 286, using the same approximate value above: ~300,000k.

    (This is less desirable however given that the 300k number was calculated specifically for this 1 spell. Adding 300k to a lower base damage spell would result in a HIGHER % bonus than listed above. This is why I went with the % mod over the flat damage add mod because it scales based on base damage).



    The real problem in my view is that most people get scared of large numbers. Melee hit low and fast, Casters hit high and slow. Compare the following scenario: 400k dps.

    A Melee can do 400k dps while "only" hitting for ~100k because they can hit 4 times a second. (Yes, I know it's more complicated than that, I'm simplifying here).

    In contrast, a Wizard (casting the above spell) will only hit once every 3.375 seconds. So to reach the same 400k dps number as the melee hitting for 100k, that Wizard needs to nuke for ‭1,350,000‬.

    This is where the fear of large numbers comes in. To a normal person (player or dev) looking at melee damage and seeing hits for 100k vs a Caster hitting for 1.35m it is not readily apparent that these things are equivalent. To them, they see 1 side hitting for ~14x more than the other and think it's unbalanced when it really is exactly the same.

    It is because of this that caster abilities have often been nerfed heavily in the past. People see a large number but lack the proper context for whether that number is balanced or not.
    FubarEQ, Raccoo, Maedhros and 5 others like this.
  19. Renotaki Elder

    Also from a gameplay standpoint, it leads to some pretty unfun situations in my opinion. Especially when dealing with no ADPS, its possible to roll nothing but non-crit for the base spells (not procs) hits on a single target. It makes you do the damage of a wet noodle against that mob even when hitting your spells that would otherwise make you do great dps if you had support or better luck. I'm aware that it averages out given a long enough time, but it just feels frustrating to get an unlucky string.

    However, I think there is an issue with balancing casters this way other than just the fun factor. Crit damage continues to increase as the game goes on. So non-crit hits continue to become even worse compared to the dps you are supposed to do when it all averages out. As the game continues, crit chance mods continue to have a bigger impact on your dps performance. Wizards (all casters except necros) end up need relying heavily on crit chance increasing ADPS from other classes that synergize with us. As crit damage increases, we only become more and more reliant on crit chance mods to keep pace with where are DPS is supposed to be to keep up with melee. I'm worried about casters getting too ADPS dependant if things continue to be balanced the way they are.
  20. Whulfgar Augur

    Reno are you now topping Tanol's parses every single raid now ?