Does Caster DPS Gear Matter Without Focus Effects?

I normally play melee characters because I enjoy the power spike of getting that next big weapon upgrade.

With no focus effects until Luclin, will caster gear even make much of a difference?

Unless you just really enjoy raiding, I don’t see what the incentive is for, for example, a Necro or Wizard to raid. Does having a few more raw stats with raid gear make that much of a difference? Am I missing something?

Why did they decide to remove focus effects? havent played in a while.

Raw stats do matter for sure, but the focus effects seemed much better, especially for necros

Yes.
1) FT gear starts at SoV
2) Clickies exist starting in classic
3) Resists and HP are still useful for raiding
4) Having a large mana pool allows you to spend it more efficiently, nuking harder on big pulls saves your chanters mana, nuking harder on harder hitting mobs saves your Healers mana.
5) You wanna have a full set of focuses in SoV anyways because you wanna have them all day one of Luclin and not 6 weeks into Luclin.

Not 100% sure but the devs have said that in order to even contemplate removing the Mark of the Mighty buff (was put onto Raid Bosses in early expansions on TLP servers to prevent them being trivial) it would be necessary to remove them, so maybe it is part of a long-term strategy of working towards that goal.

Two reasons (my opinion):

1. They were out of era and shouldn't have been on TLPs.
2. They created a lot of drama (Runnyeye, Sol B, The Hole, etc.).

thanks for the replies, kind of makes me not want to play a caster though, i used to have a lot of fun hunting down the focus effects for my necro on earlier tlps, not sure id be as driven to hunt for upgrades now if the only thing i get is raw stats. maybe its time to play a melee

You just have to enjoy casters to play them. I get that overall player power has creeped and motm is unfortunate. However, melee damage seemed more powerful relative to spell dps on phinigel and selos with focus effects in game, and to me it seems like removing focuses would make it even further imbalanced. I dont play casters, but diversity of classes is nice. Though people like mag and enc, it is because the pet melee is strong, not the spells.

casters are way too strong early on in classic, focus didnt make sense untill later when all melee were twinked out in epics and casters need to catch up

dont tell me a warrior in bronze with a screaming mace is as good as a naked caster druid/necro/chanter/mage, not even in the same ball park

Answer : yes

Want to do more DPS? Cast more spells. How can you cast more spells? Get more Mana.

Pretty simple.

In the raid game? Yes.
In the group game? With some exceptions, much less so.

Every caster benefits from having a higher mana pool in raids.

In group game, you usually only need a higher mana pool when things go wrong generally.
Certain casters benefit from hp/ac in the group game.

So generally, unless you're tryharding in raids, don't spend a ton of money on gear as a caster.

I'm not sure why it's acceptable for melee to do twice the dps of casters in later expansions yet unacceptable for casters to be competitive DPS wise in the early expansions.

The lack of focus effects actually makes for some interesting choices early on for casters, as an example I kept a set of gear specifically for soloing (more Hp/AC focused), and one for raiding (leaning on max mana with a consideration for hp/ac). The lack of focus effects personally has zero impact on my class choice, but that's just me.

Extra mana only matters in raids or something like quad kiting (which you shouldn't bother with). If you ever manage to go oom in an exp group, you or your group is doing something very wrong.

Doesn't matter what my mana pool is; it matters what my mana regen is. Unless i'm a Wizard, this is out of my control until Velious. In a group, if I never have full mana and never have 0 mana, my mana pool almost entirely doesn't matter.

Most melee classes will out DPS casters until focuses are available. Necros and shaman start topping parsed on the longer dragon fights in NToV due to their mana regen. Paladins and bards were really the only melee Wizards and mages were beating in classic/kunark.

Come SoL wizards will start topping the DPS charts. Mages still struggle to deal damage and not die due to motm and pet aggro.

Wizards raining in SoV can easily top parse on some fights.

Wrong. Even if you never hit full or 0 mana your mana pool matters. First the obvious you start at full mana so you get extra nukes with original mana bar. Second less obvious but more meaningful is when you cast those nukes helps can help your Clerics and Enchanter mana bar, having a bigger mana bar means you can select better times to dump from 90% mana to 50% mana.

You’re not thinking about the bigger picture. Imagine the power spike you get when your 60 in raid gear and luclin comes out. Focus effects turn on and boom 15-20% increase in damage/healing depending on the focus effects you have. Then after all that you still have another power spike coming because now you get AAs.

Wut.png

Here let me create a scenario to help you understand
Mage A has enough mana to nuke 9 times before going oom
Mage B has enough mana to nuke 5 times before going oom

Their group pulls 5 mobs at once, then 5 single pulls.
During this timeframe they both regen enough mana to cast 8 nukes
Because Mage A has a larger mana pool Mage A can cast all 8 of his nukes on 5 pull, Mage B can only cast 5 because Mage A can cast 3 extra nukes on the 5 pull the mobs in that pull die faster. Because the mobs die faster his Enchanter has to cast less Mezzes and/or if the mobs are being tanked his healer has to cast less heals since the tank spends more time with 1 mob beating on him instead of 5. Thus Mage's A larger mana pool saved his Enchanter/Healer mana, making it less likely the group has to take a med break for the Enchanter/Healer.