Wizards

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

  1. Beimeith Lord of the Game


    We pretty much already are. I tried to fight against it for a number of years, but they refused to give Wizards desperately needed upgrades and instead gave them to other classes (Druid/Enchanter/Bard) in the form of ADPS.

    Chromatic Haze was originally my idea for a Wizard AA. Look who got it: Enchanters. What is the class that charms/mezzes/slows/hastes and gives mana regen doing with a triggered ability that creates massive DPS? That was the result of a previous dev who decided Enchanters' role was going to change to that of "Caster Bard" and become adps for casters. Same for Druids who became the "Caster Shaman."

    At this point we're in the same boat as the pure melee classes when it comes to needing ADPS.


    The problem now is that while both we and melee are dependent on ADPS, melee baseline DPS is increasing to the point we get left in the dust:

    Melee crit chance is tied to their dex stat + other mods. It keeps going up every level through stat cap increases + heroic increases (though it is getting close to 100% now iirc so it will stop eventually).

    Caster crit chance is mods only, and they haven't given us more in several years. Non-wizard casters have been capped at 58% passive since CotF, and Wizards have been capped at 51% since RoS. (Note that I'm not counting the Wizard innate here because it doesn't work like normal crits).

    As far as I can tell this^^^^^^ is one of the main reasons why melee (including Tanks here) have increased so much vs casters over the last few years: ever increasing passive crit chance.
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  2. jiri_ Augur

    What would happen if hInt served a similar role as hDex for cloth casters? I'm not anywhere near the endgame, so I honestly don't know.
    Maedhros likes this.
  3. Daedly Augur

    It would make sense that H-wis/H-int gives direct benefits to spell crits, both healing and damage. It just makes sense.

    I would be really interested in seeing what it would have hybrids doing with their Aug choice's.
    Maedhros likes this.
  4. Beimeith Lord of the Game

    Well, naturally, it would result in higher dps for casters when not burning since we hit 100% crit rate on burns easily now.

    It wouldn't solve the disparity between crit and non-crit, but when non-crits become less common that disparity becomes less meaningful.


    Necros for example have a *much greater* disparity than anyone because the base value on their DoTs is really, really low, (and because focus crits for DoTs). That's how a DoT with a 6k base can crit for a Necro for like 800k/tick. (Made up numbers).

    However, this doesn't matter nearly as much for them because they have a passive crit rate of something like 85%? (I don't remember the exact number). With that high a crit rate the occasional non-crit doesn't really affect their average dps nearly as much.



    The issue with this suggestion though is that they really don't want crit rate to be 100%. Once it happens all the time it stops being "special" similar to things like double attack being 100% now.
  5. Beimeith Lord of the Game

    Another potential solution is to lower the cast time of our spells.

    People always seem to forget that DPS has two variables. You can increase DPS without increasing the damage: make it faster.

    Of course, this type of a change would also increase burn DPS as well.


    EQ has A LOT (like dozens) of knobs that can be used for tuning, but knowing what each knob does and how it affects others is the hard part when tried to achieve a specific result. I've tried to educate others over the years by working out and making public my formulas, but it's still pretty difficult (but not impossible) to do.
  6. kizant Augur

    Zekers might be hitting 100% crit rate for entire raids but that doesn't seem to be true for all melee. Monks and Rogues are probably in the 70s? I know I've been averaging around 95% so more crit rate isn't going to help me all that much. It's definitely true that we've become more ADPS dependent like melee but I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

    I understand not liking caster design but I don't personally have a problem with the fact that our damage is spiky. And in general I prefer that for wizards than the alternative. I'd rather have a stronger burn and lower sustained than some middle ground.

    I also have trouble worrying about what burn vs auto attack really means when talking about sustained damage since everyone should be clicking everything they have all the time. Sure, on a test dummy I can only maintain around 230k to 240k DPS on a single target for 20 minutes without clicking a burn AAs but what's the point? I would never do that and I can't even judge whether that's low or not on its own considering that I would never do that. But I can say that is is a lot higher than it was two expansions ago.

    So, besides all that, let's assume that Wizards could use a bump in sustained DPS and that one of the options Beimeith listed would be good to recommend. Given our current abilities that they have to work with what would be the suggestion? Maybe re-scale the SPA 124 amounts on Improved Familiar going back to maybe RoS? Increase it by 50 to 100%?

    I'm going to assume that spells are a lot harder to change than AAs and that they aren't going to want to make major design changes. Or that even would be cost effective do make a major change.
    Sancus likes this.
  7. Travestii Elder

    I'm a fan of the increased spell focus scenario. It seems like it would be easy to implement, would give the boosts where needed - more % on the group side where we are generally lacking, and less on adps burns where we lack less. This variable could be gear or AA specific, so it could easily be tweaked among classes, and could be scaled up on gear in expansions when we don't get buffs to dps from new spells; likewise, it can be level limited so those scaled focuses don't work on new spells from the next level increase.

    Although I appreciate that there are lots of ways to go about tweaking dps, I wouldn't want to see a decrease in spell cast times simply because of the potential for increased server lag. If anything, due to the lag I'm in favor of increasing the spell cast times and melee delay in exchange for proportionate increases in empirical damage. However, those numbers may inspire the Fear of Big Numbers in the uninitiated that Beimeith was describing earlier.

    However it works out, qualitatively on raids I'd like to see an even playing field for pure dps classes similar to what Maedhros was describing.
  8. jiri_ Augur

    With the amount of haste available, I wonder how high delays, especially for 1H weapons, would have to get to create a noticeable change in server lag.
  9. Szilent Augur

    A fine opinion, but doesn't acknowledge that there's ample room for overall improvement as it stands.

    In the parlance of our times, "por que no los dos?"
  10. Renotaki Elder


    We have high parsing rogues in our guild and I asked our highest parsing roguemabout his raid crit rate. The answer was 50% crit rate and 20% cripple rate. So yeah, 70% seems accurate. I'm sure Monks are pretty much the same. And Zerkers are at the crit cap already. So, an interesting development is that can be a form of stagnation for them on raid DPS as well. They can't crit anymore than they already do but rogues and monks can keep improving through more dex as time goes on.

    Also, my criticism of the ever increasing crit damage while our crit chance stays the same has little to no bearing on high support raid situations where you have the crit rate.You seem to be focused on the raid dps, which is fine. I think that's the most important thing overall too, but my main concern is that I don't want wizards to end up being useless in the scenarios where you don't have a bard giving you cycled Epic and Fierce Eye, a line of COPs, and multiple Auspices to be worth something just because we end up with something crazy like 2000% crit damage (hyperbole of course) at some point in the year 20XX. Classes will likely be tuned for raids with the assumption that wizards have 90-97% crit rate like it is now, so the gap when you don't have that crit rate will only widen (like in sub-optimal group makeups). All DPS should need ADPS to perform well, but not to the extent where you become useless without the right classes with you. It's also frustrating when it's the support not hitting the right things but you are executing your buttons correctly. I prefer to be in direct control of at least over half of my DPS for that reason. I'm of the opinion that the role of caster ADPS shouldn't expand more than it already has for these reasons. A fairly innocuous way to reduce this issue would be to provide caster power gains in a way that does not involve more crit damage on active skills and passive. For example, raising the base damage boost on the focus tab AA lines in a way that would give a comparable sustained/ burn increase without needing the extra crit mods from ADPS to get the full effect.
    Whulfgar likes this.
  11. Beimeith Lord of the Game

    It's a matter of opinion based on whatever you personally think the class should be like.

    Wizards used to not rely much on adps and that was one of the reasons I liked playing one. It's the equivalent of Necromancers being a "solo" class but not being able to solo mobs in current content any more. It's a change to the nature of how many play the class, some might like it, some might not.


    As with all things, it's a matter of degree. Crazy wild spikes with no consistency whatsoever is bad. Average middle with no variation whatsoever is boring, thus bad. Finding a proper balance between the two is the goal, and right now we're leaning hard into the first one, and it's only getting worse over time.

    This is a whole discussion in itself about what the definition of sustained vs burn vs autoattack et al. actually mean. Everyone seems to have different definitions.

    I think the easiest solution would be to rescale Destructive Adept. It's pathetic at the current 1% per rank. 10% total focus for 351 AA spread over 8 years. To quote someone I knew long ago in another game: "That's pathetic. And sad. It's Pathet-i-sad."

    Currently it's:
    • RoF 3 ranks
    • EoK 3 ranks
    • RoS 2 ranks
    • ToV 2 ranks
    Change instead so each rank is 40% instead of 1%. Then spread it out over expansions more:
    • RoF 1 rank
    • CotF 1 rank
    • TDS 1 rank
    • TBM 2 ranks
    • EoK 1 rank
    • RoS 1 rank
    • TBL 2 ranks
    • ToV 1 rank
    I assume spells are actually a lot *easier* to change than AAs, but I also assume that *changing* an existing AA is a lot easier than making a new AA. Changing a "1" to a "40" and "SKU19" to "SKU20" shouldn't be difficult changes. (Yes, I know they have to test it and everything, but really, we're talking very minor changes on the dev side).


    That said, they could just as easily do it to Improved Familiar though I think it isn't as good a solution for stacking reasons. Plenty of spells use 124, but there is only 1 passive AA line that uses it, and it sucks and is in need of a revamp anyway.

    Whether they *want* to do it the answer is probably not. Even if they decided a change was necessary, the moment you suggest something like 400% focus effect they'd laugh you out of the building because they really aren't going to see the math the same way I presented it. To them 124 damage focus is some holy grail of an ability that needs to be doled out in 5-10% increments as anything more is too OP. (Ironic side note: Wizard Mercenaries have >400% focus effects and they still suck).

    Cost effective? The cost is the amount of time it takes to change a few numbers. I guarantee they spend more time watching cat videos (or predator/prey videos in Absor's case) every day than it would take to make this change.
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  12. kizant Augur

    Well it just seems like Dzarn has been open to making changes while Aristo never replies to anything.. Although, he did at least sorta listen to some spell concerns during beta. So, I guess don't rule updating spells out entirely but either way an upgrade to Destructive Adept makes sense. It is fairly useless in its current state.
  13. Renotaki Elder

    And a name like "Destructive Adept" makes it sound like it would be really cool too :(
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  14. SonOfABiscuit Augur

    Wizards need immediate help. There's nothing else to discuss. Devs can you please at least acknowledge this need? Thank you.
    FubarEQ likes this.
  15. menown Augur

    I don't want to sound mean. Your posts cannot be taken seriously without some type of deeper qualitative input or some type of data to back up your case. At least 3 wizards in this thread are providing valuable input in this discussion. I also agree with each of their perspectives.
    Marton, Maedhros, Sancus and 3 others like this.
  16. Beimeith Lord of the Game

    I mean, both Improved Familiar and Destructive Adept are AAs and fall under Dzarn's purview, even though IF is technically a spell.
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  17. Szilent Augur

    removing from Improved Familiar

    3: Limit Max Duration: 0s
    6: Limit Target: Single

    , as they were removed from mag Heart of Flames, would help versus the particular dependency on a grouped bard for wiz AEs to be worth casting
  18. Beimeith Lord of the Game

    Max duration shouldn't matter, the only DoT we had of any kind was pyromancy and that's a DD now.

    What's I'd really like to see on Improved Familiar is a few points of crit chance, and the focus changed to something that stacks with Bard song.
  19. Szilent Augur

    rains have duration
  20. jiri_ Augur

    Would increasing the duration increase the damage, or is it fixed at four waves?