Call Lightning Storm can be really strong, especially on an air Savant

Tuxedomanwashere · Feb 14, 2024

Tilomere said:
You swap mantles after you have a spell maintaining it. For example, let's take FvS, another class casting at only 43. You snapshot archon to AoV, CLS to Draconic, and play and use say macrotechnic mantle for the % HP.

The FvS example is relevant, but not particularly concerning damage-wise. I mean, I doubt that the FvS is going to be pulling the same numbers even spellpower and crit/crit damage wise for the particular spell (CLS) in question. Your calculations emphasize the damage of CLS as an outlier instead of what I think is a more fundamental issue. This seems more like a general problem of mantle snap-shotting allowing you to keep bonuses you otherwise shouldn't than something particular to CLS. It's something you can just as easily manipulate for PA's temp sp or the multiple mantle effects you can run with classes/builds that use aura spells of some sort. Particularly for classes that are able to use more than 2 mantles effects at once. With the sorc, for example, it's not even that CLS is that strong (although I will say that it is strong enough to warrant a feat and racial points, which I think is good). It's that you can not only snapshot CLS to Draconic, but also LDA/DA to PA and then benefit from a third mantle (I personally prefer the Draconic as the primary mantle on my AoV for the CD reduction). Wizard does just as well with its LDA/DA spells for other mantles. Nerfing CLS though wouldn't actually solve the problem. The mantles that you can benefit from due to lasting spells will still carry on the effects regardless of the amount of damage you do with CLS and people have been using other spells to benefit from the mantles and will continue to do so under the current system. Unless they nerf the mantles in lieu of solving the snapshotting, which imo is the worst of the possibilities.

edit: By nerfing the mantles, I should clarify that I mean that the devs specifically change the values of the mantles or in some other way alter how the mantle functions in accordance with a new description because it's easier than solving the snapshotting and figure that people will use spells that take advantage of this snapshotting (i.e. bandaid).

Tuxedomanwashere · Feb 14, 2024

Tilomere said:
You don't have to worry about control, since you are a macrotechnic tanky you won't die in 1 hit even if you pull aggro, and tanks are getting a ranged taunt rotation in next update anyways from US.

Wasn't Throw the Boom and Knight's Challenge supposed to share a cooldown, or did they change that (or did they add something further that I didn't know about)? I haven't done the calculations on the character's life expectancy with the addition of the macro mantle, so I'll just take your word for it for now.

Tilomere · Feb 14, 2024

Ooh, they do share a cooldown. Well that's not very useful then.

I'm not seeing how a sorc pugging a raid at 50k or so total dps is an issue.

Tuxedomanwashere · Feb 14, 2024

Tilomere said:
Ooh, they do share a cooldown. Well that's not very useful then.

Well, at the very least, it shouldn't really change the amount of ranged aoe aggro pulling that the tanks have now.

Tilomere said:
I'm not seeing how a sorc pugging a raid at 50k or so total dps is an issue.

So just so we're clear, this is the combination of CLS, mantle, vortex and runearm combine? Or is something else added to it (or are you saying that the 36k you have in your conclusion is before the 1.8 from debuffs)? Because if this is just a matter of the CLS, then it's important to note that this would not be 50k total dps, first of all. I already pointed out that the mantle proc is in fact 5 seconds, not 3 seconds, so the average damage per strike is not 19/CL. I'll use the calculations that you made in the first post I replied to to illustrate the problem.

Tilomere said:
CL = 7 Savant + 32 char lvls +6 epic level +5 (cast with Spiral swapped offhand for exceptional crit/caster levels/SP) = 50

Cast at 1300 SP with metas, 78% Crit, 100 Crit Dmg with Draconic Mantle snapshot on it will do spell + mantle initialproc/dot every ~3 seconds (1d6+6 mantle + spell each) cast at 50 lvls x 14 spell power x (1 + .78*(1+100%) = 19*50*14*2.56 = 34k procs, or add up to 10k dps to a sorc (before debuffs).

Vortex is 1d6+10 cast at 1300 SP with metas, 78% Crit, 100 Crit Dmg with primal mantle snapshot on it will do vortex damage+ mantle damage 1/3 of procs ~3 seconds
(1d6+10 vortex + (1d6+6/3) mantle) cast at 29 lvls x 14 spell power x (1 + .78*(1+100%) = 16.7*29*14*2.56 = 17k procs, or add up to 5.7k dps to a sorc (before debuffs).

A lightning storm runearm added in will do 22 dmg/CL * 32 CL * 14 spell power x (1 + .78*(1+100%) = 22*32*14*2.56 = 25k / 5 seconds = 5k dps (before debuffs).

Debuffs are 1.15 (t5 awaken) x 1.2 (vulnerability air savant) * 1.31 (ash + ooze) = 1.8x

Can get to 36k dps on a sorc with debuffing at 17 actions per minute with 0 spells cast for the duration of a PUG raid. Then it is just a matter of metering spell points for the duration.

You also divide up the damage by seconds for vortex and runearms to get DPS, but leave CLS for damage per strike, which I suppose leads to the same acronym. If you were to do a true damage per second comparison, you could do that by fixing the values to a least common multiple (which would be 15 in this case). You would then get:

((9.5x5 + 9.5x3)*50*14*2.78))/15 = (9.5x8)*50*14*2.78/15 = approx 9860 dmg per second.

the 9.5x5 comes from CLS procing 5 times in 15 seconds and the 9.5x3 comes from the mantle procing 3 times in 15 seconds; it would proc on the strikes at 3 seconds, 9 seconds, and 15 seconds (so 1st, 3rd, and 5th strike; there's not an initial tick for damage on cast, so you have to wait for the first strike after 3 seconds). Multiplying all the other bonuses, which, at least as far as I can tell is correct and then dividing by the number of seconds that elapse (15 seconds) gives you the damage per second.

Vortex would be damage every 3 seconds for 15 seconds. I know there's damage as soon as you cast, but cannot remember if there is one at 15 seconds, so in the name of being cautious, I'll say that it too only has 5 ticks in the span of 15 seconds (at 0-12 seconds). The mantle would proc at 0 seconds, 6 seconds, and 12 seconds in this case. You have the same crit there, so I don't know why you go from 2.78 to 2.56. This brings the math to:

(13.5x5 + 9.5x3)*29*14*2.78/15 = (67.5 + 28.5)*29*14*2.78/15 = 96*29*14*2.78/15 = approx 7224 damage per second

As for the runearm, I don't know how many projectiles will come out of the runearm after a 5 second charge (since I also don't know under what context the runearm is being used, e.g. if an arty is using this or this is being used by a sorc).

But even supposing the 5k dps is true, you are looking at roughly approx 22084 dps, actually less, because any mantle proccing off of CLS would not be proccing off of the vortex or runearm (so if we discount the mantles from the vortex that would bring it down to approx 5079; adding that instead would bring it down to approx 19939 dps), which is a far cry from the 50k you were talking about before. Even with the debuffs, you are looking at roughly approx 39751 dps based off of the first number (which as I said previously wouldn't actually happen) and approx 35627 dps based off of the second number. Add to the fact that this would be the damage for one creature. Which means that, CLS would have less impact the more monsters there are, because only the vortex and runearm would be doing aoe. If roughly 10k dps extra on a singular target that isn't guaranteed to be who you want to hit is going to upend the delicate DDO ecosystem, after all the prep work you're talking about having to do to get that, then perhaps there's a cause for concern. Personally, I find it to be soothsaying more than anything else.

edit: I did forget to account for Inevitable in the calculation, which I will proceed to do here first for single monster and then with group. Inevitable adds 3 ticks, for a total of 4 hits of damage over a 12 second period. The problem is that on a singular monster, the DoT will reset every 6 seconds under these circumstances. Therefore, the LCD between 3, 5, and 6 would be 30.

((9.5x10 + 9.5x5x2)*50*14*2.78))/30 = ((9.5x10 + 9.5x10)*50*14*2.78))/15 (9.5x20)*50*14*2.78/30 = approx 12324 dmg per second.

where 9.5x10 is the damage total of CLS strikes in a 30 second period (10 strikes) and 9.5x5x2 is the damage total of the mantle procs as a result of every 6 second interval (of which there are 5 intervals in a 30 second window) providing 2 ticks worth of damage each. And then dividing by the time to get DPS.

(13.5x10 + 9.5x5x2)*29*14*2.78/30 = (135 + 95)*29*14*2.78/30 = 230*29*14*2.78/30 = approx 8653 damage per second (if that had the mantle)

with these values combined with the runearm but with only the CLS taking the mantle proc (for reasons expressed above), you'd have 12324 + 5079 + 5000 = approx 22403 dps before debuffs, or 40325 dps with debuffs single target. The problem is that this damage is only factors a single monster. To factor in more than one monster we'd have to do something a little different. I'm gonna work with CLS alone first for simplicity.

I'm not entirely certain how CLS works, but if I had to hazard a guess, the probability of a strike hitting a certain monster in a bunch within the strike radius of the caster is probably equally distributed (so 1/n). That means that a single monster has 100% chance of getting struck each tick, a monster among a group of two has a 50% chance, and so on. The absolute best case scenario would be for a monster that is not currently under the effect of the mantle dot to be struck by lightning, as you'd want the ticks to proc concurrently for maximum damage (essentially a poor man's aoe). So the upper limit of this would be 4 monsters, as there are 4 ticks to the inevitable dot. This would actually be closer to 2. If we shift the time axis so that the onset of the dot is the T = 0, then you'd have monster 1 have a dot running, from 0-9 seconds, monster 2 have dot running from 6-18 seconds, and monster 3 have dot running from 12-24 seconds (so dot on the first monster would already be over; even though the mantle can proc every 5 seconds, if we are only using CLS, it's being gated by the timing of CLS ever other strike). If we consider the amount of damage that the three monsters would experience over the length of time that all monster would have a dot, you are looking at the timeframe from 0-9 seconds. So monster 1 would have 4 ticks (at 0,3,6,9 seconds), monster 2 would have 2 ticks (at 6,9 seconds). For a maximum of 6 ticks of damage that can take place from the mantle DoT over any given period after 9 seconds (obviously the before 6 seconds, only one monster is taking the DoT damage). Now, because we have noted that only 6 ticks of mantle damage can occur concurrently over a period of 9 seconds given the maximum number of monsters affected by the CLS-induced mantle procs, we would find an LCD that incorporates factor 3, 5, and 9 for time (45) noting the 6 mantle DoT procs every 9 second period. This gives us:

((9.5x15 + 9.5x5x6)*50*14*2.78))/45 = ((9.5x15 + 9.5x30)*50*14*2.78))/45 = (9.5x45)*50*14*2.78/45 = approx 18487 dmg per second.

Where 9.5x15 is the number of 1d6+6 CLS strikes every 3 seconds for 45 and 9.5x5x6 is the number of 9-second intervals (5) in which two monsters are collectively taking 6 dots worth of damage.

Now, the issue is that it's not a guarantee that the dotting would break out this way. For example, if, in the most remote of hypotheticals, the CLS only struck one of the two monsters (statistically highly improbable, I know), then it would essentially have the effect of being single-target for all intents and purposes. I had said previously that it's likely uniformly distributed. I don't remember off the top of my head if there is anything fancy I'd have to do for applying naive probability to this, but considering that the most damage the CLS would see in action is when 2 monsters are affected by the DoT, I think it's safe to say we could average these two values. If it seems I'm cutting corners, I apologize. I've been typing away at this for literally hours. Anyways, the average between 12324 and 18487 is 15405.5, which I'd just round up to 15406 since the game probably would. On the condition that debuffs could be applied uniformly and consistently to these two monsters, simply multiplying by 1.8 gives approx 27730 dps. That's the most contribution that the CLS is providing at any time across the battlefield in raw damage output.

Damage for the vortex and runearm is a simple x2 if we consider the DoT being snapshotted onto CLS. 15406 + 10158 + 10000 = approx 35564 dps for two monsters if the monsters are close enough together, otherwise it is 15406 + 5079 + 5000 = approx 25482 if the only spell hitting applying coinciding damage is from CLS. With debuffs, this amounts to approx 64015 for the former and approx 45868 for the latter. 12324x1.8 = approx 22,183 (this is the portion of the single-target damage that is from CLS). 22,183/40325 = approx 55.01%. 27730/45868 = approx 60.46%. 27730/64015 = approx 43.32%. For single target, only CLS hitting two targets, and the combination of vortex, CLS, and runearm at the same time during this all throughout the timeline. If there are 2 targets, supposing that one only used those three abilities, CLS would be at its most impactful. This is because CLS has a large enough radius that even in the more than likely event in which a monster would at some point move outside the effective range of the runearm or vortex's aoe, the CLS would still be able to strike it.

27730/x = 0.5501
27730 = 0.5501x
x = 27730/0.5501 = approx 50409 (this DPS is the breakeven with the single-target WRT the amount of contribution the CLS brings to the DPS)

subtracting 27730 from 50409 yields 22679 and subtracting 27730 from 64015 yields 36285 (the portion that is the vortex and runearm)

22679/36285 = 62.50%

In other words, in the event that less than 62.50% of the time during the fight, two monsters are not close enough to be effectively hit with vortex or runearms at the same time, CLS would start trending towards it's optimal contribution. One might still counterpoint that 43.32% is still a hefty amount of damage or, in the case of single-target, where you'd presumably see CLS used against a boss by his lonesome, that 55.01% is an exorbitant amount of contribution from one spell.

The only issue is that there are plenty of spells, epic strikes, and SLAs in the rotation that, despite costing spellpoints (which you can for the most part bring down to or start at a negligible level I might add) trivialize the bonus damage being done with CLS and are more concentrated in all but the few situations in which there is only one/two monsters to deal with, and in the cases in which 3 or monsters start showing up and the aforementioned abilities are able to hit more than one on at least a similar basis (skill issue?), the damage contribution for CLS is quite a bit less noticeable. Is it powerful? It's niche, and for a build playing off of that niche, the user will be very happy. Is it overpowered? In my honest opinion, no. Like I said earlier. CLS damage is not really an issue. If anything, snapshotting in general could be argued to be an issue, but nerfing the CLS SLA that already has a niche utility and opportunity cost is not really going to deal any major blow to the class that could allegedly abuse it, and it's arguably not going to change the fact that there are other ways to exploit the mantles that people can and probably have been using to great effect.

Tilomere · Feb 15, 2024

Amazing analysis, and I 100% agree. It will perform very well, the user should be happy with the outcome, but I don't see it as overpowered in any way either. The price paid of being in or near melee to deal in or near melee level of dps is fair.

The Fatesinger sonic strike is also very strong for raids to just spam in u66 as free damage since the spender gives spell points back. I think the essentially mana-less dps of an air savant at least while CLS charges hold (PUG raid duration) will be fairly solid.

Call Lightning Storm can be really strong, especially on an air Savant

Tuxedomanwashere

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Tilomere

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Tuxedomanwashere

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