Air Savant Spellpower and crit dmg

[Bliv]

Agreeing to disagree when he shows you the math doesn't add up (not to mention the rest of the comments) to make this comment (see quotes below) true.



Love to see it.

Dom, I just want to de-escalate.

As we do not judge things from the same perspective, I see no point in feeding the fire.

I will still be happy with air/electric.

Ying's points as to cold/water being better will still be valid.

There's a world where these two statements can exist.

That is where I choose to stand.

Cheers,

 

[Sarlona Raiding]

Agreeing to disagree when he shows you the math doesn't add up (not to mention the rest of the comments) to make this comment (see quotes below) true.



Love to see it.

I can't speak on Air Sorc as I haven't played it in a long while, but in general the game is not played in a spreadsheet, although I find it to be a useful tool to sketch out builds as a good predictor of performance. When testing builds primarily built for questing - I tend to look primarily at total quest clearing speed which sometimes doesn't line up with spreadsheet rankings. There are just so many things in this game that impact what build works best for a given person and sometimes that includes things like playstyle preferences. In addition, I build differently for solo questing and shortman raiding than I do for group raiding. All of this impacts what is best for a specific person.

Agreeing to disagree is simply a very polite way to exit an argument someone doesn't want to be in - for whatever reason. If someone is courteous enough to exit a discussion this way - just let them lol.

 

[Garix]

Say goodbye to the cold crit chance bonus

• The 5% Cold Spell Crit Chance in the Frozen Wanderer Filigree Set Bonus is changing to Cold Spell Crit Damage.

Edit to add link https://forums.ddo.com/index.php?threads/u82-preview-1-misc-cleanup-changes.30381/

 

[Bjond]

Say goodbye to the cold crit chance bonus

• The 5% Cold Spell Crit Chance in the Frozen Wanderer Filigree Set Bonus is changing to Cold Spell Crit Damage.

Edit to add link https://forums.ddo.com/index.php?threads/u82-preview-1-misc-cleanup-changes.30381/

Heh. Nice heads up on that link. Invalidates gear on a whole raft of characters and nerfs casters (again) for a twofer.

Looks like their strategy is to nerf casters right out of the game instead of balancing.

total quest clearing speed which sometimes doesn't line up with spreadsheet rankings

Yeah, a lot of the argument looks like raid dps v quest speed/utility. I adored Air Sorc for it's Leap long ago, but now it's pretty easy to wedge in EA for Leap + heals on most casting builds.

No leap is what I dislike most about my tanky cold druid and it's the first thing I'd add if I gave up the "tanky" bit; I just checked it's build AGAIN the other day to see if I could add some run and/or leap to it. Fortunately, it has WWolf+Snowslide for OOC, but that's too slow for in-combat chasing of stuff that rinses agro.

 

[justin credible]

Heh. Nice heads up on that link. Invalidates gear on a whole raft of characters and nerfs casters (again) for a twofer.

Looks like their strategy is to nerf casters right out of the game instead of balancing.


Yeah, a lot of the argument looks like raid dps v quest speed/utility. I adored Air Sorc for it's Leap long ago, but now it's pretty easy to wedge in EA for Leap + heals on most casting builds.

No leap is what I dislike most about my tanky cold druid and it's the first thing I'd add if I gave up the "tanky" bit; I just checked it's build AGAIN the other day to see if I could add some run and/or leap to it. Fortunately, it has WWolf+Snowslide for OOC, but that's too slow for in-combat chasing of stuff that rinses agro.

and they even squeezed in a nerf to acid well and meteor swarm, because acid and fire sorcs were over performing, i guess

 

[PaleFox]

I rate you as someone making a highlight reel and a claim that doesn't provide an accurate representation of the game once you dig into the details.

Cold Sorc (standing in a reaper quest without any potions, boosts or metamagics):
Critical Chance: 84% (a 28% delta from your build)
Critical Damage: 124%
Spellpower: 1386
Evocation DC: 140s

Back of the napkin math shows electric doing 14% less raw damage compared to cold. In your build, it's a much wider delta than that. With a 102 CHA, your Evocation DC is likely low enough in modern content that mobs are frequently saving against your spells so they are taking half damage and negating crowd control. Your crowd control (BoGW and Greater Shout) is also exclusively Fortitude based, which means it's not going to work well against melee-type mobs where you want it to work the most. Cold also has the benefit of Polar Ray, which is no-save *and* scales to MCL25.

Symbol of Stunning on your bar instead of Mass Hold Monster is mindboggling.

And that's not even addressing the elephant in the room: Time Stop. It is single handedly the best epic moment in the game. Full stop. It's a disservice not to be running it as a caster (including healers). It's dumb that it's so good, but I just play in the sandbox SSG has provided.

Hmn, can you do some number juggling and see what a bard can come up with for sonic?
And yes, timestop will be a miss then.

 

[Lazuli]

I'm so frustrated with this dev team. They said 'we want to help casters', but casters only have gotten a nerf after nerf.

 

[Monkey_Archer]

Casters are not being nerfed. The 11% cold/6% other element crit chance nerf is about 5-10% dps loss yes, but the master of X feats are 10-20+% dps buff depending on build, and the caster level buff is roughly a 10% buff on top of that (again depending on build). Perhaps there are some obscure builds that might end up behind from theses changes, but the vast majority are coming out ahead significantly.

 

[Sarlona Raiding]

Casters are not being nerfed. The 11% cold/6% other element crit chance nerf is about 5-10% dps loss yes, but the master of X feats are 10-20+% dps buff depending on build, and the caster level buff is roughly a 10% buff on top of that (again depending on build). Perhaps there are some obscure builds that might end up behind from theses changes, but the vast majority are coming out ahead significantly.

It depends on the build - my dark bargainer warlock made out much better than my fire sorc.

Warlock
-6% crit chance (I knew this was never intended to stack so I consider it a fix)
+2 blast dice from change to epic pact dice feat
+3 pact dice from swapping redundant crit chance augment with pact dice augment I couldn't fit in
+ proc damage from master of force (although I don't think it can possibly be a 20% dps buff as you state). There is no feat tax as the epic eld blast feat is now auto-granted freeing up a feat spot for this.

With my exact build the dice and crit chance net to an increase of 2.67% damage so pretty neutral. If I add in the proc damage it's a total increase of 14.4% damage from Normal through R6 in line with your estimate. In R10 it's an increase of 48.7% damage so it's a massive buff in R10s which was needed. Also not everyone runs R10 and many of those that do don't exclusively run R10. So it's a big increase, but not necessarily a game changer for everyone.

On the other hand my fire sorc gets less than a 10% increase in single target damage total even with master of fire which I will have to fit in. I don't take intensify currently because I found with it my spell point usage was too high with. So if I don't change it I lose 50 spellpower on top of the 6% crit chance. The main strength of the build is clearing mobs in quests solo and with the change in meteor swarm this is a little bit less effective. I will probably reroll this character to something else, although I wouldn't exactly call it weak - just less effective.

 

[EinarMal]

For Air sorc, at least the lightning bolt buff should really help. I was rotating in cold spells to fill in gaps previously, as single-target lightning spells were pretty limited. Obviously still got to fit in master of x but it will just be a damage boost on top rather than making lighting bolt viable.

 

[justin credible]

For Air sorc, at least the lightning bolt buff should really help. I was rotating in cold spells to fill in gaps previously, as single-target lightning spells were pretty limited. Obviously still got to fit in master of x but it will just be a damage boost on top rather than making lighting bolt viable.

single target rotation for air sorc is scorching ray, frost lance, iceberg, thunderstroke, ruin, gruin

 

[EinarMal]

single target rotation for air sorc is scorching ray, frost lance, iceberg, thunderstroke, ruin, gruin

I found ruin/gruin to be way too much sp burn for being practical in raids. That rotation has way too many elements, and you are not going to get your master of X procs, plus T5 Magus is mandatory for me for TS.

For sure lightning bolt has to be in the roation now.

 

[Sarlona Raiding]

I found ruin/gruin to be way too much sp burn for being practical in raids. That rotation has way too many elements, and you are not going to get your master of X procs, plus T5 Magus is mandatory for me for TS.

For sure lightning bolt has to be in the roation now.

Ruin/Greater ruin make alot of sense in draconic when you have the ability bypass immunity. Beyond that they haven't aged well in recent years.

 

[EinarMal]

Ruin/Greater ruin make alot of sense in draconic when you have the ability bypass immunity. Beyond that they haven't aged well in recent years.

They are good damage, with T5 Draconic, but the spell point burn I found unusable in a lot of raids, only really good for quests.

 

[Bliv]

single target rotation for air sorc is scorching ray, frost lance, iceberg, thunderstroke, ruin, gruin

I usually go Storm Catcher, Thunderstroke, Chain Lightning, Tonquin's Lightning Hammer, Prismatic Strike.

If I know the fight will last (bosses), I'll start with Eladar's Electric Surge and keep 3 stacks on at all time.

I'll only use Lightning Bolt if everything else is on cooldown, which is almost never.

Prismatic Strike and Thunderstroke have short cooldowns. You can use them more than once usually in your full rotation.

 

[rabidfox]

+2 blast dice from change to epic pact dice feat

That's just the 2 dice epic blast feat gave in new location; no gain there.

 

[Sarlona Raiding]

That's just the 2 dice epic blast feat gave in new location; no gain there.

Thanks for the clarification.

That means it's a 10.56% damage increase overall and a 43.73% increase in R10.

 

[LurkingVeteran]

Thanks for the clarification.

That means it's a 10.56% damage increase overall and a 43.73% increase in R10.

I'm really curious how the Master of feat does so little for your warlock. Did you test this?

I eyeballed the math to a >30% DPS increase on single target EB damage. You get EB stance scaling as well as I understand it, and EB attacks 1.5x the rate of spells. It's like 75 extra base damage at cap, and EB base damage is probably somewhere around 150 now? That's around +50%, which sounds pretty crazy.

If this checks out, I'm guessing that warlock will be among top caster DPS (whatever that means now) and even AotS splashes might become viable. However, the listed changes could also be completely different from the actual changes.

 

[rabidfox]

I'm really curious how the Master of feat does so little for your warlock. Did you test this?

I eyeballed the math to a >30% DPS increase on single target EB damage. You get EB stance scaling as well as I understand it, and EB attacks 1.5x the rate of spells. It's like 75 extra base damage at cap, and EB base damage is probably somewhere around 150 now? That's around +50%, which sounds pretty crazy.

On my warlock, I've got blast, pact, dripping w/magma, revels in blood, and rupturing echos going; those all each do similar numbers (give or take) to master of force. Plus there's ED mantle procs making up a chunk of damage. All of that damage lost 6% crit and 15% crit damage. My AoE damage went down, my single target damage only went up slightly as result of how it all adds up.

 

[Sarlona Raiding]

I'm really curious how the Master of feat does so little for your warlock. I eyeballed the math to like a 30%+ DPS increase on single target EB damage. You get EB stance scaling as well as I understand it, and EB attacks 1.5x the rate of spells.

Yeah I wasn't factoring in force crits so that gives it a bigger boost. Not 30% for me as my force spellpower and crit chance are lower than light, but still closer to 30 then 10. But it depends how you factor in other damage sources as well which will result in a lower #.

Either way it's a nice boost for warlock.