Compare the Warlock's Master 1 Rift to the Wizard's Master 1 Fusion and post what you think. Lilpete 68 Warlock Amend Blackburrow Message Edited by DfknW on 03-06-200606:53 AM
Rift: Cast 5.0 seconds Recast: 3 minutes Pwr cost: 598 Radius: 15 meters Targets: 12 Dmg: 2934-4890 (3912 avg) Total dmg (presuming avg hit with none resisting) : 46944 Fusion: Cast 5.0 seconds Recast: 3 minutes Pwr cost: 598 Radius: 5 meters Targets: 3 Dmg: 6471-10785 (8628 avg) Total dmg (presuming avg hit with none resisting) : 25884 On the face of it, Rift has the higher overall damage, due to the difference in amount of mobs hit. However I have to wonder how often we will be using this on 12 mobs? Most groups I fight tend to have no more than 3 mobs in them. Perhaps those who raid may find it otherwise but in the rest of the game world, it rarely if ever happens. Even if a PBAOE I rarely engage 12 mobs at one time. Yet this is obviously the way the Devs seem to see the wizard/warlock 'balance'. We do lower damage against more mobs, they do higher damage against fewer mobs. From what I have read this was argued against during beta and nothing changed. I dont expect it to do so now. On a semi related note, 5 seconds? Come on people. I have enough problems now getting my 3-4 second skills off....
You need at least 7 targets to get more average damage out of Rift, which is doable if your tank pulls 2 groups at once or you save it for large encounters only (which is what I usually do since the 5sec cast timer sux). What makes Rift way better though is the range. 15 Meters isn't exactly much but at least we don't have to go in melee distance.
Fusion: melee cast range + 45 degree cone. If fusion is a PBAE or an encoutner AE that hits 3 targets at 35m range, I'd say fusion > rift. But at it is now... I dont think fusion is better.
Now heres the REAL question about rift right here, can you with a troubadour during a raid, have this spell be your first cast while using concussive and not pull mabey more than 1 mob onto you. Because if you can't then the spell becomes almost worthless because of the cast time and power cost of the spell. On the pull with a large aoe encounter is about the ONLY time this spell is worth casting, and if it can't be done wiht some reasonable amount of safty the spell is junk in my book.
In practice your going to be able to maximize the 3 targets ALOT more frequently then 12. Like others have said it takes 7 targets to get to the same damage wizards are capable of doing at 3. There are very few 7 target plus AoE opportunities in the game. Though the range and the cone effect have got to make Fusion somewhat difficult to weild. I would say that probalby makes these two spells relatively equal.
Allow me to correct. At max intelligence Fusion (Master 1) ranges 6602-11003. Using the first tier of Freehand Sorcery I hit 9-12K fairly frequently. Fusion is a very dangerous spell to use when you're soloing melee-heavy mobs. And in a group it becomes a pain in the [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] if someone moves the mob(s) out of the 45-degree arc. The appeal of the spell sometimes makes you sometimes do stupid things like wasting time arranging mobs like dominoes rather than just dpsing them down by other means. Maybe that will wear off. So my conclusion is that it's too soon for a conclusion, and we'll need to put these two spells more to practice in the next month or two to really know.
It would be nice if Sony would have put more linked mobs in this expansion. No point in casting Devastation, Absolution or Nebula when all you're fighting are lone triple-up heroics, which is 99% of the NPC population i've encountered in KOS thusfar. Rift would be handy in a linked mob encounter too, but since everything is triple-up heroic, if I were to cast Rift in Dungeon_Room_01, i'd get every monster from that room and then some (which wouldnt be easy to survive since it's all triple-up heroic). I think Sony forgot about us, this time around. Ive only seen 3 places where there are linked mobs in KOS. Groups of ravasect beetle hatchling things in Bonemire, Oratorium room in Sanctum of the Scaleborn, and the entrance room of the Temple of Scale. Everything else I've encountered is single. :|
I've grouped with a lot of wizards with fusion and in practice it's a superior spell to rift. Rift is a decent spell but fusion is awesome. There seem to be fewer encounters in this expansion that involve enough mobs to make rift actually deal more damage than fusion and even if it did partially damaging 6 mobs isn't nearly as useful as killing 3 of them. Also, it can be worth whiled to cast fusion on 1 mob, that's never the case with rift.
Another very important thing you may want to consider when comparing spells, and this really sucks for rift.. You can only engage 5 encounters at a time. So, although rift technically hits 12 targets, if you grab a bunch of greeen solo mobs together, even if you have 12 aggroed onto you, it will still only hit 5. That said I still love the spell, especially with a paladin around.. for xp we just grabbed 4 groups of 3 ^'s, unleashed rift... I just wish the [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] recast was like 1 minute instead of 3, but wizards have the same problem there. ~Morb
Every where I turn there are solo mobs in KOS and so few linked. We are at a bit of a disadvantage as most classes go in soloing in KOS. As Fusion is almost a mini AOE for wizards, maybe a huge single nuke for Rift might of been better. It would of given us some different tools at our disposal as we already have a heap of AOEs and few single DD spells. Message Edited by Dreadwalker on 03-06-200606:46 PM
Rift is going to be alot more practical in raids in KoS than you would think. The new dungeon zones (which btw are what most of the raid zones look like), allow for adds in very small spaces quite often. I just hope you have a pally in your group with amends, or a troub, or someone...cause you're going down if you have 2+ groups on you (though aggro isn't as bad as you'd think. It defintiely doesnt generate as much hate as some spells). I don't know which is better, but I love Rift, maybe not the MOST practical spell, but alot of fun to use in certain circumstances. And If I'm real lucky and have dynamism, precision, etc, coupled with having any one of the 6 armor procs I have, you can see some HUGE damage. It's alot of fun... especially if you crit Message Edited by Geoff77 on 03-07-200607:58 AM
Rift definately needs a bump in dmg to help with the balancing, yes wizards are supposed to shine against us in single targets which they do, but in an ae encounter still with fusion and there ae line, they actually par with us or majority of the time there parse was a lil bit higher then ours... Suggestions would be: Increase the dmg of rift to about 4.5k to 6.5k that way the multiple mob encounters, we would get a lil advantage on our ae line then they do.. (warlocks should shine in AE's) This would NOT be the complete fix for our class but we have to start somewhere, so SOE dont think this is the only problem we have. There are still other spells I have quarels about but ill try to find or make the proper post. Mimix ~ 70 Warlock ~ TDS Message Edited by emagine on 03-07-200607:51 AM Message Edited by emagine on 03-07-200607:52 AM
They are only close to us on ae dmg once every 3 mins, and thats only if the fight is extremely short. If you look at other classes marquee spells you'll realize that sorcerers really got some of the nicer ones. But, rift still could use improvement. If they are going to give wizards a huge dmg AE at 65, i wouldnt mind having a huge dmg single target nuke a 65, because honetly we have enough AE power as it is already. And using Rift on a sigle target just isnt practical... 5 seconds to cast and 3k-4k dmg is horrendous.
This is not true. Yesterday I was harvesting for roots on gazer island. I teamed up with a defiler to kill those annoying solo roamers faster. What worked extremely well was running near all the aggro gazers that spawn around the roots and then use rift + boundless fury to kill them all at once. I had about 10 gazers on me and when rift hit, all their healthbars went to orange. Then a few boundless fury and some solo attacks while it recharges and they went down very fast.
mine still says 5meter range when did that change? 60 degree cone was changed in the last hotfix, but no one mentioned a increase in the range. a 15 m radii for rift imho is better than fusion simply because fusion is a positional 5second cast time spell. In reality it takes longer to get into position, start casting and line yourself up for the blast than it does to sit back and start casting the aoe. The extra dmg would be made up easily on casting another spell or 2 while the wizard tries to get into position. The nice thing is that these two spells compliment each other very nicely. I wouldn't see an issue with the spell changing to pbaoe 15m radii 4-6K dmg on 8 mobs max. Of course some like it the way it is now too. Message Edited by IllusiveThoughts on 03-07-200612:16 PM
I don't remember Fusion getting a range increase, I'd assume that's just a typo or something. Anyway, I like Rift for pulls, since I can start it as the group is on the way and not have to worry about range or position. I also like that it can help burn down the big groups of adds or whatever needs burning. Fusion seems like it'd be more useful for raid vs. a single mob, but you can't have everything. The only thing I wish is that Rift had a more warlock-y animation. Flying rocks, what am I, a GD summoner?
