Rebalance of Wiz/Mage DPS vs. Melee DPS on Raids

I do not see wizards in the top ten on "burn" events, which is why I feel that is where the focus should be at first and foremost. Your experience, of course, varies from mine.

I come from an archaic school of thought with regards to classes, I admit. I believe that (and I am throwing numbers out so don't believe it etched in stone, just for illustration purposes only) that over a five minute stretch and assuming a wizard and magician and necromancer each do a million damage...

A wizard should do 800k in the first minute and 200k in the last four
A magician should do 500k in the first minute and 500k in the last four
A necromancer should do 200k in the first minute and 800k in the last four

Now as I mentioned, that is an old school thought. And the numbers are obviously not exact. But the illustration and the perception is there- a wizard should do the majority of its damage early and not much at the end... a necromancer spends the first amount of time casting all the DOTs and then the rest of the event enjoys the damage... and a magician is right in the middle.

And we can agree to disagree, of course. But while you bring up wanting to increase sustained/long term damage... I say if burst/burn is increased to be more in line with zerkers and rogues (and probably monks) that you directly also cause sustained to go up as well.

Wizard A does 1000k in one minute and 200k in four minutes. That averages out to 4k DPS. If the first minute a wizard gets boosted to 1300k and the 200k stays the same for the last four minutes, then that average is 5k DPS. So overall sustained did get boosted, but the benefits are felt mostly at the beginning where a wizard should shine.

And of course, I say this as a non wizard who only looks at top ten raid parses. So I could be off my rocker. I admit it.

Wizzys lost a lot of DPS with the proc nerf, but even before that their DPS was low. Increasing base damage would help with the loss of procs and bring them up to where they should be. Which may or may not bring the burn up to where it should be.

Fixing the burn first and then fixing their overall DPS, will more than likely end up with the burn being highter than it should be.

I cannot disagree more on the equal dps for all classes dogma that you preach. Does not make sense to me at all, although my own forum rule makes me disregard your whole post since you said the word "should". I'll say though, that in my book if you want equal dps to the wizard, the wizard better get tanking and dps pets, and three times the utility that they have now. (See how it feels to get a ridiculous post in your face?)

I'm sorry. Where did I say that all classes should be equal DPS? I must have missed that part.

A wizard should do 800k in the first minute and 200k in the last four
A magician should do 500k in the first minute and 500k in the last four
A necromancer should do 200k in the first minute and 800k in the last four"

What is magical about a 5 minute mark? Does everything reset in 5 minutes? You are not the first to propose a 5 minute "balance" idea ... but I have no idea where that comes from in the modern game. Because wizard burns don't reset after 5 minutes. We get Spire (and GW) back at 7:30, FD (and IoG) at 12m, ITC and AD at 15m and FotG/AF back at 20m. Other casters are similar. Burns also last longer than 1 minute...

Unless you are talking fundamentally altering wizard adps timers and length. Which even the greediest of wizards has never proposed because they realize just how game altering it would be for bursts of that magnitude.

You can have an archaic view of burst vs sustained ... but you have to realize that at least for raid parsing, your extended timeline needs to go out to at least 15 minutes, not 5 minutes.

For your example that would mean:
Wizards do 1.5M
Magicians do 2.25M
Necros do 3M
(edit - numbers off originally cause math is hard)

You see the issue with that line of thinking I hope...

Now I know you are just throwing numbers at a wall. But we have REAL numbers for what wizards, magicians, necromancers, etc. can do ... and there would have to be significant nerfs to make any class work the way you describe.

Zlandicar and Sontalak are 2 minute events roughly and the only way I come close to necros on these events is when we just say 1, 2, 3, go on Zlandicar and the necros are not paying attention (cause ... it's Zlandicar ... even with horrendous lag, anyone can just pretty much defeat Zlandicar). To be fair, that's true for almost all classes so it's not so much a wizard deficiency as it is a necro is just good at all phases thing.

Just focusing on wizards, you would have to increase my damage by 50-66% on a big burn to equal a necro ... and probably 100% if you wanted me to beat necros each and every time on Z and S. That's not easy to do without pushing some seriously absurd gains to wizard self adps if all you want to boost is wizard burst dps.

For the most part, the original idea of the thread is kinda pointless. Lag rules all raid dps talk at the moment, especially for wizard due to proc reductions. Where I sit on a parse is directly related to the lag in an event (usually the higher the lag, the better I place due to simplicity of burn and no major melee component).

We should only talk theoretical parses in ggh on dummies (with appropriate adps) if we really want to talk about current raid parse issues. That can be difficult to do since few other classes post real parses and not everyone has raid level max aa other toons to test.

I had never played Wizard before, but thought it might be a fun alt to goof around with on FV. Fully admitting I came in with my unfounded preconceptions of what the experience would be like, I was shocked at how the play was different from what I expected.

My thought was that a Wizard would cast little, med much, but when they do cast, it should look a bit like this...



My worry, I imagined, would be mainly on when exactly to drop this mighty spell (that probably slurped my mana bar down by a noticeable amount), for this spell was bound to draw all the agro to me like harm touching while also telling the mob mean stories about its genitalia. BOOM would be the only word as 47% of its health (likely it's left arm and a bit of it's ear) would atomize.

Glory would be ours my friends with a firing battery as I, the Wizard, have graced you with my presence.

What I got instead was a class that was out DPS'd by the SK in the group on some fights, was casting constantly and had bugger all for versatility compared to the classes around me.



Please give Wizzies some love. They've been more than patient.

...if there's any of them left after all this time

Nowhere in what you quoted did I say that the three INT DPS classes should do identical damage. It did illustrate if each of those classes did the same amount of damage, how I feel they should get to that million total. But not once did I say the three should be equal.

Try again.

No matter, you are off your rocker as you said you might be. I am sure other threads could use your ideas, or not. Take care!

A proper wizard fix will benefit wizard burst and sustained.

And overall - i once again maintain that wizard are chock full of drawbacks that are supposed to result in being better than others at DPS. Pet classes, healers, tanks should be second fiddle in almost every dps scenario in my world.

Or.... my sword of xuzl should come buffed up well enough to tank named for me.

What you are asking for is infinite mana and to do the most damage in every scenario in the game. I wish you (and wizards who also want that) much luck in that. I just think that is asking for the moon, and you are not going to get the moon.

I hope wizards get some boosts. They deserve it for sure.

So you are going to make a baseless claim against me, put words in my mouth that were not said, then when shown I never said what you propagated you shrug your shoulders and say "Doesn't matter".

Gotcha.

Indeed, almost all other classes have a fighting chance when moloing a summoning mob. I have yet to figure out how to handle that situation as a wizard...

Give us enough dps to burst it down or something...

Slightly off-topic as this is a raid-dps thread though...

The magician class is often called a DPS class but it is not its role. It is a support class that can tank with the pet, do DPS, pet pull, CoTH, and summon support tools. The combination of all the offensive, defensive and support factors does make it a very strong class but DPS alone is just not its game. If magicians tend to be in the top DPS ranks during raids continually, something is going wrong. The game is definetly out of class balance since many years and class roles should be more differently. Not every class should be meant to be a DPS class if it is not a healer or plate armor tank. In group content necros and druids can outdamage a magician rather easily which seems to be alright. Not sure how well the necro does perform in tanking against the magician but it does alot more DPS and when all dots are on the mob they hit like a train each 6 seconds.

mage not dps class? may i ask in what world you playing in. on raids mages have 1 primary job. dps the mob. they can have 2 sec jobs which are mod rods and maybe off tanking if tanks are in trouble.(but as a bst i can do that with my pet as well and have para to give out).

no mage in their right mind is going be casting anything but dps spells during the fight. if i was to ask a mage on raids for pet gear if i die i get laugh at and told wait till after the fight.

.

Thank you for entertainment.

Mages are dps (enhanced with few minor things). Do they need help in dps department? Not really, from what I've seen on raids, but I'm sure they wouldn't say no to something new to play with.

Rogues are also a support class. They are there to pick locks for the raid, scout ahead and pickpocket mobs to debuff them. Sometimes they may have time to engage the enemy directly and use a backstab or two.

There is nothing magical about five minutes. It was an arbitrary number chosen. We can say 10 minutes if that is what people want.

I was trying to get to the point that (assuming the three classes start their burn at the same time with the same ADPS) a wizard is going to do the majority of their damage early, and not much after that initial burst. They should use a lot of mana early, do a LOT of damage, and then when their ADPS and discs run down they should do low damage while preparing for their next "burn".

That is my philosophy of the wizard class. Whether devs agree or disagree is their discretion. Back in 1999, people did not choose a wizard because they wanted to pet tank, or DOT mobs, or be a sustained DPS class, or tank, etc. You picked a wizard because you wanted to blow everything up on a mob quickly and decisively, and then chill until the next time you can destroy a mob. It wasn't uncommon for wizards to sit out several mobs while regaining mana before engaging in the next (because, again, wizards were never thought of as a sustained class).

I see a few wizards who want a pet tank, or want to tank mobs as they cast spells at the mob. If that is what you want, then there are other classes that fulfill that desire. I just think a wizard should want to blow stuff up really fast, and should focus on that above everything else. Just my opinion. They need help, I just differ (it seems like) as to where that help should be directed towards...

I believe this is an archaic model, and one that has perpetuated in people's minds to the point where the class has suffered in today's current faster paced game.

Improve wizards burns to be like zerkers and rogues. Line up their burn abilities to be on the same timers (maximum 15 minutes). Increase crit rate AAs to be the same as other int casters. Sustained DPS will follow with these increased burst changes.

And I openly state that my viewpoint is an old school method.

And I fully agree that by improving the burn to that of zerkers and rogues (and monks) you improve the sustained. That we agree upon!