EZ Server

I know hateborne is in the process of caster augs, but i'm not sure on the ETA for those. Here are my opinions and suggestions to  change casters.

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Caster vs. Melee classes DPS

I personally feel that casters (excluding enchanters) should have a slight edge over all melee classes simply because they are much harder to box than melee. To get a melee to kill a mob you only need one command, whereas casters have to be played actively like healers. Twist healing may work, but twist damage spells does not for obvious reasons.

The hierarchy of caster dps should be in my opinion:
Wizard
Mage / Necro
Enchanter (relegated to bard level of dps)

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Semblance of Augs


There is no UW in the game for casters (afaik, correct if i'm wrong) and the only thing casters can make in the crafter's guild is the mana necklace (again, afaik, correct if i'm wrong). Since the mana necklace recipe is there, i feel it would be best to tweak it rather than trying to create something from nothing. As it stands, hardly any one uses a mana necklace. Indeed, mana is not a big issue if you have an enchanter or you are higher tier (tserrina's symbol etc). My suggestion is to add a buff to the mana necklace.

Suggestions
- buff depending on tier of mana necklace
- 50% proc equivalent dmg to the corresponding NS level
- Depending on the tier, differential percentages of twincast, triplecast, quadruple cast
 on the fly let's say for mana necklace 1 : 10% twincast, 2% triple cast, 1 % quadruple cast
                                 mana necklace 10 : 100% twincast, 50% triple cast, 10% quadruple cast

I would suppose each twin/triple/quad cast would have to have its own spell and such that you get charges that last 30 seconds. But for example if you get a triple cast proc, then it overrides a twincast, and so on.   I'm not sure how hard this would be to make (please advise).


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Pets

As many are aware, pets are pretty much useless and annoying to use at higher tiers but op at lower tiers. What I suggest is to have a buff that eats your pet, like the warlock spell in world of warcraft, and in return, you get extra spell damage  or a proc dmg etc.


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Spell damage

In my opinion, the base damage of direct damage spells needs to be boosted by 100%.

-- that's it for now, I will write later when i get more time.

Again these are just my opinions, feel free to voice your opinion too.

A Wiz with UC2 and the right spell level crits for 5.7 million.   Add in a Tess robe and Mana neck and you have yourself a dynamo.  The damage you want is out there, but you have to work for it.  Very similar to the mapped progress of strike augs... you just have to follow the grind to get where you want to be with DPS.

I have two wizzies with UC2 and yes it crits for 6.5 mil, but my monk can also crit for 6 mil in less time it takes to cast it. Not to mention the fact it can do it simply by assisting. Also, that's a t8 spell.

How much plat did you spend to get that Wizard dps?     How about for the monk?      You have to spend millions and grind through the content in order to get melee dps to be effective.      From what I've heard is that wizards are effective right out of the box, no plat investment required.

At least the threat reduction is no longer 100% on Tserrina's robe and wizzies cant just chain cast without any threat.

UW Greatstaff has a twincast component on it. 

I have two t8 wizzies and two t8 mages. All UC2'd.

That's why i said mana necklace which is basically equivalent to NS in terms of essences and SLS.

Yes, maybe we don't need to spend money on it  currently but it's not like there is a choice.

Like i said, casters are much harder to box than melee. In turn, they should get some sort of advantage to balance that out.

Twincast is a spell effect, triplecast and quad-cast do not exist and would have to be manually inserted into source each time. Twincast is also a HIGHLY dangerous effect that can radically increase the DPS. I've got it on UW Greatstaff click and that's about it.

The mana issue is going to be fixed in a future source. This is due to mana being int16 (max val 32k) currently. Hopefully we can get it to int32 soon to start consuming normal mana amounts.

Lastly, the melee do have some bit of a better time investment. The amount of platinum is trivial as it could fluctuate rapidly. It comes down to the time investment. If the wizard/necro/mage were stupidly easy to gear out/match/beat melee, why bother starting a melee character and spending 20h farming for just aug stuff when you could play an INT caster and be top dps by the time you hit the next tier?

The caster augs will play off of the mana necklace as it does cost a fair bit of plat to level up. This way the time sink can be met with the mana necklace and added aug.

As for pets, they are far from useless. They aren't as class defining in higher tiers because we had issues with everyone rolling pet classes then AFKing or hitting Feign Death. The pets do a fair amount of damage, live MUCH longer, and (with all the tools) become very rugged when they aren't directly tanking. The caster augs will help address pet damage as well.


-Hate

That I heavily disagree with on this. Just because it's harder, doesn't mean one should get a hand out. I used to box 3 wizards easier than most could box 3 melee. You just need to put effort into it.

The time to get a wizard is admittedly shorter, but the DPS is not truly on par with the melee...yet. With the addition of the caster augs, the time sink will be on par and there will be no excuse for not making them even.


-Hate

It would make sense if casters had a choice in investing time other than UW.

it isn't a handout. As it stands there is no reason to box casters. It's not about effort. It's about what makes sense. Do you want to use one button or five? People will say that you can /twist spells but that sort of defeats the purpose and it's not that great for casters.  Moreover, melee don't have to worry about mana. If it is the case that mana isn't working properly, surely there should be some respite for this when it does work.

Sure, it costs money but when you're t8 it doesn't take long to get strike 9 augs. So it's not as if it's that hard to get the augs.

Try doing T9 and having some of your melee eat a riposte then tell me there's no reason to box casters that can sit back and glass cannon it without having to rez.  And saying making strike 9 augs doesn't take long when you're in T8...no shit, the backfarming you have to do for them is laughable because you are severely overgeared for farming HoH, Abyss etc. and not a result of everything being streamlined to make melee chars more viable than casters.

arya1, I don't think you truly understand what it takes to gear an army of melee. Go gear a monk to t7+ (that's full strike augs and all). If, after you've done that, you honestly think that it "isn't that hard"...then we'll talk.

Also, no using existing essences stock. Farm them fresh. Farm the SLS fresh. Existing plat can be used.

I played SK, CLR, BRD, WIZ, WIZ, WIZ. I still haven't geared my cleric's augs and haven't finished my bard. SLS make me sadface.

-Hate

My point is there is no alternative right now. So telling me that you have to invest money into melee is sort of pointless.

Wizards as you have pointed out are capable of 6.5 crits with almost 0 plat and time invested.  Couple that with UW Greatstaff twincast and maybe best dps in game?       All free dps.  

Enchanters pretty much rock and bring so much group utility to the table.    They keep toons alive, manage aggro, break camps.   In addition they have some fairly solid dots and dd spells.    Enchanter has never been a pure dps class and probably shouldn't be.   If you don't have a chanter you're a nublet.

Mages can add IA3 to group for added dps, they have nukes and if you get the gear available to you the pet can be very viable in high end tiers.      Never really checked out their dps so they may indeed need luv.  

I have two t8 enchanters. Also i never said they needed to be good dps as you mention it brings a lot of utility to the table. They should be in line with bards as I stated above in terms of the melee hierarchy.

Again, unless you can invest in them, the "free" dps argument is null. Berserkers have "free" dps but you can also get FS augs.

Not an argument, an observation.   The dps should not be free.    Zerkers shouldn't have free dps either.   See people rolling with 1 cleric and 5 zerkers lol.

Requiring casters (and all classes) to do their time to get dps gains sounds like an excellent idea to me.

Also it's not technically free. If it is the case that mana isn't working properly currently, then when it does work, you shouldn't  be able to just spam cast the same spell without going OOM quickly.

I find zerker dps in non AE situations(for me, on level content) to be lacking

I had 2 as my primary dps when i broke into t5 and they were auged with FSV's and 41 charms and I couldn't kill with any speed.

I added a 2nd group with ST dps. 

Sure you could run 5-10 zerkers and make up for it, but it might still be lacking for single targets.

Anecdotal  and just my experience that zerkers are not the end all for DPS.

Bards are good DPS due to ninjastrikes, the augs that are stupid expensive.

Berserkers have free aoe dps but it's like pets...strong at start, low at end. They can also never be amazing/best ST dps either. That is their sacrifice. Highest AOE dps at cost of never being able to compete with true single target DPS.




Mana is a resource. It regenerates or can be healed. It's not truly a limiter. If I were to implement these changes and fix the mana, then you would get ~4-16 spells off before being totally OOM. If you had mana necklace, 2 clicks later, another 4-16 spells. Repeat ad nauseum...

That's not really a limit and would make the INT casters too powerful.

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I'm not shooting it down to troll, be a dick, or simply to be argumentative. I'm shooting it down because it has serious logic holes. This is coming from the person that has written damn near all of the spells used past 70 for every class. This is coming from the same person that fought for months before I finally started submitted code and writing spells. I want wizards to be viable options, but I want get there on their own...not just because of a handout.

There is a quote from a person that I cannot remember (and can vaguely remember the quote), but it is something to the extent of "if you want fairness, you compete on the same terms. Fairness isn't giving a leg up to some one because they are disadvantaged.

-Hate

The only argument put forward is that it takes money invested into melee.

 If we are talking about fairness, I WANT TO INVEST MONEY in my casters, but can't.  To tell me that I need UW to be comparable is not fair.  The fair terms would be that there would be a way by investing time and money into casters to get comparable DPS. Until then it isn't fair. Also, melee and casters are not on the same terms, one does not require spells or mana. If they were exactly the same there would no point in differentiating them. So, yes, it does appear like a troll.

As you wish. Since you won't listen to the one balancing and building the casters out of the shithole they were in, good luck getting anything pushed through Hunter. He'll just direct you to me. So far, I'm not seeing anything logical.

Melee have a significant time investment. Caster don't have as a steep of an investment. Until they are nearly close, there will be a gap in dps.


With that, I'm abandoning this thread as it's clear you are upset that we aren't agreeing and grasping for straws to hold it together.



/cast Gate

-Hate

Hate,

You haven't provided a solution to make casters comparable to melee, just keep telling me that melees spend more money into them. Yeah, ok. I think we have established that.

Lets take away casters mana and spells, give them dual wield and strike augs.

Hunter has stated numerous times that he values input  from all of the community.     I would suggest keep providing input to make the server better for everyone.    You could take the time to create the caster augs on a test server and provide them to Hunter.    Update statements are pretty basic.

Community > Individual

You admit that you aren't even willing to use a caster to it's full potential, and I don't mean by using /twist I mean by casting multiple spells because it doesn't make sense to you to use more than one button...

Last I looked mages only had that 50k x2 spell for their best direct damage spell.  Would be nice to get a better one.