Your wizards must not be getting the dps support they need, or they must be terrible. Wizards are by far the easiest dps class to play. No one would say they are best in all scenarios, but they can easily be in the top 10 of a raid.
And it's often forgotten about that many encounters have dots tick down on the mob even while they are locked on hit points. Ever seen a necro run back to the prior target in the alishai raid? They know what they are doing, but it is not helping the raid.
Your dps classes and necros must not be getting the dps support they need, or they must be terrible if all your wizards are in the top 10 or your parses. And if your leadership is tolerating necros running to locked mobs to get better self parsing or not designating better tower clear/click groups, that's on your guild. Out of 11 TBL/GMM events … there are *3* with locked phases - Prince, UEE (has anyone cared about a non-bane parse here ever?) and Mech Whirl (sort of) … every other class can dps a locked mob as well. All dps classes are relatively easy to play. And all dps classes require skill to go from good to great parses. What the hell is your point anyway? People make it sound like it's a good thing wizards can compete for a top 10 spot on a guild parse...it's not. If you are a raiding wizard main, where you land on the damage parse is all you got. You're not soloing most current content (ToV at least gives you some room for some trash mob kiting). I watched one of our returning necros molo her way to the 6th floor in ToFS (I was impressed and it wasn't easy, but she did it) … a wizard isn't doing that with a merc. In fact, it may be fair to say that the wizard is the ONLY class that isn't doing that. And it's only going to get worse with ToV raiding. Long events. Lots of switching. Controlled dps on boss mobs. We got significant boosts this expansion … and it is disheartening to see that others got even more. And melees don't have their weapons yet....
How are wizards in the group game at 115? I've been leveling a new box crew (sk/enc/dru/wiz/wiz/wiz) and while I don't expect it to reach the levels of my melee team, it would be nice to get a decent idea of what to expect. For somewhat efficient mob killing, I'm thinking this team will rely on taking mobs down by the time the 24 hits from the first Vortex are eaten up (why is the hit count so limited?), and relying on only 1 alliance pop. Is that remotely doable in ToV or are the mob HP counts too high?
It sounds like you are taking this personally. It also sounds like you're jealous of a necromancer (and maybe other classes) being able to solo content that you can't. That has been something people have been jealous about since as long as anyone can remember. My point is that you might not be as good of a wizard as you think you are, or maybe your guild just does not have the dps support classes to make it apparent. Maybe you could roll up one of the classes that can solo stuff that you can't? This game has never been balanced.
Not going to say anything about who is better than who here. I do take offense on the lack of understanding in the ToV raids. I know MS beta tested these raids. How is your memory so short? 2/3 raids in T1 benefit burst DPS classes. 3/3 raids in T2 benefit burst DPS classes. Only in T3 do you see long sustained events really benefiting sustained DPS classes.
I don't think "long events" and "benefiting sustained DPS classes" are the same thing. The ToV raids are objectively long, but their design cockblocks DPS in general. I've kinda wanted to make a list of how much I hate the raids from a DPS perspective for a while, so I guess I'm going to use this post to do it: The Eastern Wastes: Griklor the Restless As of the last week of beta, his going up/down was HP % based, and we had enough DPS that he only ever came down in like 30 second spurts. That's definitely not enough time for Necros to ramp up, and even as a Mage it's really hurting the DPS I can put out. During the inactive periods, the adds melt, and there's almost nothing to do. Most DPS abilities/burns (but I would say moreso for casters, given the length of our effects) are geared towards consistently fighting mobs, and there's pretty much no way to use them on this event to get anywhere near their potential. The Eastern Wastes: Servant of the Sleeper Having to run around to find the custodians and swap to them definitely hurts DPS. This would be a great burn event if the boss didn't have a large damage mitigation buff for most of the fight, and if adds weren't HP % based, meaning that DPSing the boss (e.g. due to Necros DoTting it up heavily) can actually wipe you. The Great Divide: Restless Assault A few of the boss mechanics definitely hurt DPS - the 2nd one with the HP % based golems where he goes inactive and the wolf one with HP % based adds. Having to run across a huge zone to get to the different bosses wastes longer duration burns/abilities, and the low-ish individual HP probably hurts Necros despite the overall length of the event. The Tower of Frozen Shadow: Heart of Frozen Shadow This raid obviously will never be good for parsing just by its design, which is what it is. It's way too spread out with a bunch of low-ish HP adds and no real time to burn in a way where you consistently have a target. The Tower of Frozen Shadow: Till Death Do Us Part The wedding guests have very low HP, to the point it's pretty easy to have none up on a side. There's no time to ramp up on them, and there's basically no time where you can use longer duration burns to consistently DPS mobs because it's so broken up. I wouldn't be surprised if Necros just start loading up on the HP locked bosses once they go active because there's very little they can do to meaningfully contribute. The Tower of Frozen Shadow: Tserrina Syl`Tor The vampires/bats/shadows lack sufficient HP to ramp up on and require a lot of target swapping. Tserrina constantly goes inactive due to phase changes or her pull mechanic, giving little time to actually get a burn going. Velketor's Labyrinth: Seeking the Sorcerer The only problem with this event are the terrors because they spawn all over the place; that phase really cockblocks having an overall good sustained parse if you actually want to be helpful (i.e. not just sit there and tunnel on the boss). Kael Drakkel: Animated Derakor With how frequently the adds spawn, it's nigh impossible to actually DoT up/ramp up on the boss without spawning more of them, which can easily overwhelm you. The adds do have a decent amount of HP so once they're in camp there's something to kill, but they still die too quickly for DoT classes to ramp up and take forever to run in. Also the crystals are all over the place and require you to spend time running around and losing ADPS to being all spread out. The crystals also really hurt any melee who would actually like to contribute to killing them. Kael Drakkel: Restless Avatar of War The adds are beefy, but they spawn so frequently that, like Derakor, over-DPSing the boss is way more of an issue than under-DPSing it. They still die too quickly for DoT classes to ramp up on them properly. I'm sure there are some anti-melee mechanics I missed including some AEs that may force backing out. I do think the raids, despite their length, pretty much never provide a proper boss mob to ramp up on without causing additional HP % adds spawning, and high-HP bosses are the bread and butter of DoT classes (and much better for Mages, too). That makes me sad, and I don't think a single one of these events will be as good a parse event as some of the GMM raids, Aalishai, Sathir's Tomb, etc. I think the mechanics will screw over a lot of classes beyond sustained classes, too, and I implore the developers to rethink their use of some of these mechanics in future expansions. Perhaps it's shallow to worry so much about what I can parse, but honestly that's where a lot of my enjoyment of farm time comes from. I actually would love to dust off some alts to try out the ToV AA changes, but the raids are not fun to DPS on for me so I've opted not to. I know this isn't really at all related to Wizard usefulness, but any balance discussion has to exist in the context of the raids in which classes are doing their DPS. I think these raids have an unusual number of artificial barriers to using abilities as we'd like to.
Thank you for the more in depth analysis Sancus. There really is no encounter where an ideal burn can be done. I would like to argue that Necros are extremely crippled on add events that have 30 second durations, ie Griklor and Restless Assault in T1, and all of T2 events. When there is adds up that last ~ 1 minute range, necros can load up each add with Pyres, Ignites, and the other magic DoT. Not ideal, but not pathetic. For instance, I can load up 5 wounds on Servant of the Sleeper and then use the 30 second DoTs on all the adds that are up. This strategy is just not doable in the events mentioned above. Most of the time my 30 sec base duration DoTs don't even last their full duration, making the class far underperforming its peers. I am hoping that some changes can be made with these events before they go into summer farm mode. An obvious change to me is the crystals in the first Kael raid. Melee should not be penalized when damaging these crystals. Another is the custodians in the sleeper raid. These spawn so far away and require lots of movement to attack.
Your anguish sustains me, friend. <3 And with all due respect, sir, and I do mean with all due respect....at least 2/3 of the raids aren’t balance events this time?
just to add this expansion raids is kinda crappy for all dps classes. adds spawning in africa or have no hp or boss goes inactive to many times or to often. everything Ae rampages. its a middle finger to ANY dps class really. some events dont have enough mecanics some events have phases thats meaningless due to insufichent punnishment for failing. or slippery floor thats just there to annoy you
I’ll try You didn’t mention how your guild wizards win parses here. In four years I have proof our multiple wizards have never come close. I have repeated this statement a few times and no one has ever claimed a wizard has won a parse in years. But thanks for the easy bs. Are saying it’s ok that wizards get beat because in your opinion they are easy?
No sure how to compare to that video. But we killed it yesterday in 290 seconds. and the nearest wiz was 13th. A ton of alliances and claw twincasts in that video. Do I take it you are saying that kizant got #1 in that one?
Yeah, you can see his live overlay in the top left. Here's the parse when the boss dies: And here's the parse after all the adds were dead: That was on August 4th, so I'd expect it to be a good bit higher now with new levels/spells/AA from ToV. And to be clear, I'm not saying a wizard will always top the parse on Aalishai or that wizards coming in first is common in RoI (although top 5 is common). I'm also not saying Wizards couldn't use some additional love in ToV. But if "in 4 years, a wizard hasn’t broken 8th in a raid parse," that sounds like an issue beyond the state of the class. So I'm curious what your Aalishai parses look like, comparatively. It would probably make more sense to compare one from TBL, but whatever works. Edit: He has triggers for other Wizards twincasting and using Covenant, so that may be what's making you think there's a ton of alliances/twincasts. He cast Covenant 5 times in just over 5 minutes, and we only had two Wizards in the raid so should be pretty much worst case from a fulmination standpoint. He had 3 twincast procs over the duration of the boss over 18 claw casts, which is about par for the course. So I don't think there was anything abnormal for either of those.
How do you not know the answer to that question. There is a top 5 ranking overlay in the top left. The fight ended with Kizant #1 300s, 744k DPS. *Edit. Sancus beat me.
Well There it is a wizard did win a parse! I stand corrected. Alliance heavy and claws tc heavy yes. This is all we need to see for status quo melee quest damn!
On the subject of raid parses- has anyone noticed raid lag being... err, even worse than it was before since the expansion launched? I've been getting slammed with even more spell lag when we go back to do burn events like dragon. Kinda frustrating not being able to get good real raid parses with the new power gains. Burn events are almost always my favorite. TOV raids don't really seem to be great dps events in general, but the terrible lag would probably sap out a lot of fun out of potential burn events if they did exist because of how often you lose casts during terrible raid full burn lag. It makes getting great parses a matter of lucking out by not losing spell casts even if you do execute things right properly.
People don't seem happy unless its easy and always. Wizards are very much a competitive dps class when played correctly and supported as Sancus showed. Far to many people learned to play one way or play an event one way and then never adjust big or small when changes come to continue to maximize their play. Not calling you out specifically but I see this constantly someone makes broad sweeping claims about what is and isn't possible regarding dps or play. Based on them at some point in time being good only to then find out someone else is doing exactly what they claimed wasn't possible by doing something either slightly or drastically different. Be it solo, molo or topping raid parses. But wizards very much can compete for top dps spots even with other dps classes playing well and being supported. Its just not always. I reiterate the point that most people look at combined parses and compare whats mostly single target dps for others and compare it to what a necromancer does with multiple targets dotted and say I need more.
I don't want to write another novel, and I'll try to stay out of this thread after this post. I just wanted to quickly re-emphasize that I think Wizards could use some additional help, and Kizant topping a parse last expansion doesn't make that less true. There's still a lot up in the air for ToV (new raids, new weapons), but despite the large boosts Wizards (and Mages) got I don't currently feel like they gained much ground. The situation isn't as dire as some in this thread have suggested, but short duration DPS, some AEs, etc. could use additional tuning. I also think this subject is worth revisiting once people have new gear and the new raids are on farm so we have a better idea of what the new state of balance is. I don't agree with the characterization of Wizards as a relatively easy DPS class, and I think the difficulty in maximizing their DPS explains some of the different experiences expressed in this thread. And Renotaki is right, lag is a huge issue that is especially detrimental to spell casting, especially on shorter duration burns. That makes balancing different archetypes (that are affected by lag differently) even harder.
