I'm not saying freehand sorcery is the cats pajamas by any means. I was using it illustrate a point that the temp chain cast by locks is about as OP as it gets, Freehand is just the icing on the cake so to speak. I will check out the smite of consistency though, to see what pans out. Thanks for the tip.
I want to just hop in here for a second because the author seems to have some significant deficiencies in understanding mechanics. I understand the concern about Warlocks being too strong, but for the most part, that is based off people observing the parses of one person and raging over said parses. 1) There have been times where other classes have been "mostly balanced" where a skilled outlier or two would make the class look insanely OP, yet it could not be reproduced 2) Stacking temps is a playstyle strategy. It is high-risk, high-reward, and requires a high degree of group coordination to pull off. It is also very easy to mess up. If temps don't all chain correctly, or if a few group members are out of sync, the numbers really really suffer. 3) Focused Casting also tends to look a lot stronger on short encounters because the encounter's length creates a sample-size short enough that allows Focused Casting's 2.5min recast (with 100% reuse) to be disproportionately accounted for. If a fight is 1:15, Focused Casting is represented as being roughly twice as powerful as it really is in a standard setting. As easier fights become shorter and shorter, this becomes more and more exaggerated. 4) There are some pretty significant errors in your assumptions that should probably be addressed. A) Sanguine is a relatively flat potency gain, and is not "base pot value" - it does grow proportionate to INT, but INT hasn't grown as much as you may think B) Salvo doesn't convert to pot/cb base value, either, it is a fixed number related to the charm, and mildly impacted by the presence of more Salvo charms in your raid/group. C) Spellbind's 25% and Skull Focii's 9% are additive in relation to each other, not multiplicative, which limits how "OP" they can be. D) You're wrong about Freehand. It is +28Potency and +24Crit Bonus. It does not affect "base cb value" or "base pot value". 5) Finally, it is claimed that no classes can keep up with Warlocks at all. That is patently untrue as well. I'm the highest parsing Warlock in the game. On fights that last 5+ minutes, I can tell you from experience that other players in my guild are indeed capable of putting up numbers that are respectable in proportion to mine. True, I am almost never beaten on a parse. But it isn't like we've got these long sustained parses where I'm sitting 40-50% higher than everyone else. That just isn't happening. And if it isn't happening with the highest parsing Warlock, then anywhere it is happening is the fault of the players in 2nd place and below.
what I mean by base stats, are the pot/cb gains you get from temps and conversion values-because after all, isn't that what CA/Spell damage is based off? I know they are not permanent, but I also know when I fire off my salvo charm, sanguine, spellbind and world ablaze, my potency jacks up from 1,127 to 2,068 and my CB goes from 938 to 1, 212. Wouldn't it be nice if at the end of that temp chain I could add another 804 crit bonus from Focused casting? That would put me at 2068 pot and 1742 crit bonus. That's a nice little temp you locks have there, I think maybe wizards should get it too, would do wonders for Fiery Blast...
Fiery Blast //is// its own temp, with half the reuse of Focused Casting and a similar (albeit inferior) scaling effect. If a few small changes were made to Fiery Blast, Wizards would do just as well as locks on long encounters.
I understand what Fiery Blast is, the point of my statement is that Focused Casting is OP as hell. It's OK to admit it.
Sorry Mogrim, I can't keep my sustained high enough after spikes But he is correct guys, many of us do beat him some nights, or we keep neck and neck with him. I personally like putting the fights I win on the fridge
We don't have a Wizard, but on any given fight, I've had to stave off firm competition from both summoner types (although our Necro generally does a little less personal while contributing more to the raid's overall net dps) and good solid challenges from our Ranger and Brigand as well. What you suggest is simply a complete destruction of a class. If you did nothing but remove Focused Casting, Warlocks would not parse in the top 8 on parses under 2 minutes, and they would always lose to equally skilled players of the following classes: Assassins, Rangers, Brigands, Swashbucklers, Conjurer's, Necros, Wizards. They would also occasionally lose to well played Enchanters if there was a good mimicry target. I've got no idea about Beastlords so I won't even speculate. Players like Daray (Wizard) Veta and Mrmacky and Aniathor (RIP) (Conjs) as well as Mattx, Cian4k (Russian) as well as a few Brigands, Rangers, and Necros have all been able to compete. I think Wizards could use a small tweak to FB. I think Necros and Conj's would benefit from having one of their spells (perhaps soulburn) be resettable by Essence of Duality. I think other than that, the classes are fairly equal, except on extremely short burns where the sample size makes the data irrelevant.
There is a subtle distinction I'd like to add regarding Fiery Blast and Focus Casting... FC > FB onSingle Target encountersAE encountersFC < FB onAE encounters where it is desired to burst a single targetand it should be fairly obvious why. I will also add that beastlords are complete trash tier and mentioning them in the same thread as another DPS class is an insult to that DPS class.
As I stated on another thread I have seen parses where necro's and conjies beat the lock on the pars. FC is not OP.
The highest hit I've ever managed with a Fiery Blast (all temps and charms running) was 244 mil in raid-given with average gear. What was the highest point damage you've done, Mogrim, with your Focused Casting, given sorcs are mostly spike damage? Based on my analysis in competition with your class, I would say it was around 300 million, if not 350. We're you the one who cried to some developer you know, about how things were so unfair? Keep in mind, FB is a charge shot, not just a single hit.
Focused casting has twice the reuse length of FB. It should be stronger. A lot stronger. At the same time, I have often advocated that FBs rotation should be reduced to 1min recast instead of 1:15. It would sync up better with TWs and that combination of better sync and 20% more usage would likely be enough to fix your class. As to your accusation, Focused Casting used to be a Self Time Warp, which was very insignificant in power considering we could reach 60-80 SDA self buffed, or more. There were significant concerns about the class's ability to grow, because as stats increased, my "big self buff that should be twice as strong as FB" would do less and less. I expressed significant concerns about the ability as a viable "strong buff" going forward, and what we ended up getting was definitely the right call to fix the class. Even then, it was massively opposed by Slippery, the then-guild-leader-of-Equillibrium as "not enough to fix this class".
At the end of the day, your temp allows you to faceroll. Given all of my data examples, etc, your temp is absurd. Maybe it should be changed to a 25% increase in CB, to a similar reuse of Fiery Blast... If you don't think adding at least 800 points of critical bonus (at least in my case) to a massive temp chain hit is insane, you're living in a wonderful dream where everythings' coming up warlock... This is not fair. I would gladly sacrifice Fiery Blast for your 10 seconds of massive base pot/crit bonus damage.
And I would gladly trade my absolutely zilch "down time dps" for what Wizards put out during "non-peak-times". We're different classes with different strengths. A few small touch-ups on FB will give your class a significant boost to "consistent dips" which should put you about right. So yeah, Wizards lag behind Warlocks a little bit, and that can be addressed. But Summoners and Predators and Brigands can all offer contributions that are in a similar ballpark. So the answer isn't nerfing one particular buff. FFU chains can spike similarly to FC chains. So if FC goes, FFU needs to go too. And then Communion needs to go. And if that all happens, we've really got to look at how hard Brigands can hit across the board consistently. And well, we really can't stop after that and we'll have to address Rangers and Necros too. Or we could do the easy thing and make Wizards about 10-15% stronger and everything is about right. Except for Beastlords, of course.
Zilch down times? Eci's frozen wrath, a big component of Fiery Blast can only hit 5 targets! Fusion (also for FB) can only hit 3! Fusion takes a while to cast. And yeah, every wiz hits Fusion if its up in their Fb chain. And Blast of Devastation-yeah, that's instantaneous for us, for FB, but it can be for you too. And while Eci's resets Fusion we can only hit 3 things! How many targets can you hit with Rift, instantaneously, 12? 5 with Apocalypse! With Apocalypse being able to reset Focused Casting. Really? We can't even charge a ******* shot correctly, we're so dumbed down... You don't seem to understand, your class gets a massive temp, almost no AoE penalty, and a huge spike attack. This is massively unfair.
What? No grand proclaiment from mogrim about how locks are just misunderstood in regards to their crazy *** temp? Nothing? Face it, Focused Casting is a joke. The only excuse I can think for it, is some lazy haphazard developer decided he/she looked at her lock one day, before any other class, and decided it was fun to play, and having no skill with the class, decided to act accordingly. Or some whiney *** player, who was in some top tier world wide guild decided the particular class modality didn't suit their fancy. Hey, guess what? I've never bought a krono in my life, I actually pay for a subscritption, and beyond my eternal patience, this was quite enough. Why in blazes should I pay for something so obviously skewed. This might be where your problem lies!! Guess what! Most players who pay are not in top tier raiding guilds! Fix this ******** temp. It's not gonna make you any money.
