Underflow
Well-known member
TLDR: Caster damage dice/MCL. But that's not what I'm trying to prove. I'm trying to break down each scaling stat and equate them to an equivalent melee stat.
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There's a lot of math that goes into maximizing DPS. However, even without the Reaper Nerfs that everyone seemingly bemoans, Casters just fall behind in epics. Why is that? Well, it's baked into the base systems. I don't claim to be an expert, but this is my take.
(I'm using THF for my weapon examples, as it's the most straightforward of weapon types, and least powerful, performance wise. SWF is currently overperforming and TWF is a solid choice, but due to their additional stats they are harder to compare to magic.)
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<->
Damage Doubling:
Doublestrike vs Spell Critical
Purpose: Percentage chance to double all damage from a damage source
Doublestrike: A common effect is expected to hit 100% by 34. If this check succeeds, multiply damage by 2.
Available in Enhancement/Insight/Quality/Artifact/Profane/Morale/Sacred/Action Boost/Alchemical... and up to +15 from Iconic/Epic Past Lives.
Huge amounts are available from enhancement trees. Medium amounts are available from Epic Destinies.
Spell Critical: A common effect that is expected to hit about 50-70% by 34, if you have a specific kind of build. If this check succeeds, multiply damage by (base) 2.
Available in Equipment/Insight/Quality. Up to +6 from Epic Past Lives, and only for Elemental spells.
Small amounts (At best, +15) are available from enhancement trees. Zero is available from Epic Destinies.
<->
Basic Scalar:
Melee Power vs Spell Power
Purpose: Percentage scalar to total damage.
Melee Power: A rare effect that supposedly can hit 200-300 by 34.
Spell Power: A common effect that supposedly can hit 1200-1400 by 34.
<->
Maximizing damage source effectiveness
Combat Style Feats vs Metamagics
Purpose: Base stats/feat tax.
Combat Style Feats: A 3-feat line that provides structure and damage scaling. Usually increases base stat scaling, and provides a pittance of Melee Power. In Epics, has Perfect Weapon Fighting.
Metamagics: A 3-feat line that is incredibly powerful early, but is only effectively applied to metamagics early (due to insane costs), and become mandatory late to enable DPS. In Epics, has Intensify Spell.
<->
Chance to affect targets
To-Hit vs Spell DC
Purpose: Number to compare against target's base stats
To Hit: A relatively easy stat to scale that has many options. Possesses both flat and percentage scaling.
DCs: A relatively difficult stat to scale that is relatively slim pickings. Gets a lot of power from Past Lives.
<->
Conditional Damage Multiplication
Criticals vs Spell Critical Damage.
Purpose: Boosts damage by a significant amount sometimes.
<->
Base Damage
Weapons + Stats + Effects vs Spell Base Damage.
Purpose: Base damage to be multiplied by scalars.
Physical Base Damage: Scales linearly with improvements in gear and levels. Always relevant, as it's easy to grab the nearest upgrade. At cap, Main Stats of 100+ are easy and consistent. Deadly, Insightful Deadly, and other effects can scale damage further. Has options to raise [w]. Every little bonus matters. Even junk active attacks can serve a purpose due to percentage bonuses to damage.
Magical Base Damage: Scales linearly with caster level. Spells fall behind as MCL caps are hit. No Base Stat scaling. No item base damage scaling. Due to the way damage dice work, old tools stop mattering. No one cares about low level SLAs, they don't do any damage whatsoever.
<->
Damage per Second
Weapon Attack Speed vs Spell Cooldown
Purpose: Damage equalization over period of time.
Weapon Attack Speed: Alacrity exists as an option. Haste Boost exists. Haste exists. BAB increases attack speed. Single Weapon Fighting exists. An endgame level character swings a weapon at least twice as fast as a level 1.
Spell Cooldown: Exists, but is limited. At best, a character receives -30% Spell Cooldown, by sacrificing Spell Criticals, and taking T4 Draconic + Shadowdancer. It does not scale with level, it does not scale with enhancements.
So, assuming all things were equal besides the spell power/melee power divide (they aren't), an optimized character tends to have 4-6x more Spell Power than an optimized Melee Power build.
However, a Melee build swings their weapon far more than 4-6x the speed at which a caster can get an equal 'tiered' spell out, have more bonuses, don't use resources, and have explosive criticals that magic users could only dream of. Even disregarding throwing in 'filler' spells, the average caster has one or two viable spells (Polar Ray, Iceberg, Moonspear for Cold Sorcerer), with a few big cooldowns that can be disregarded.
I don't know how to fix them entirely, but the first step would be adding an action boost to reduce spell cooldown in caster trees, available early. This would help provide a burst damage window similar to Physical Damage dealers with Haste Boost, while also incentivising a caster to 'nova', and blow all their spellpoints, but run out of resources earlier.
Secondly, perhaps adding something to Magical Training that adds a flat amount of damage to each spell you cast, equal to your casting modifier? Something that provides a floor, even for your first level spells. If providing this in heroics is unacceptable, tie it to being at least character level 20.
Third suggestion is to make offensive metamagics (Empower, Maximize, Empower Healing, Intensify) grant less spell power by base, but now gain additional spellpower per character level. It makes no sense whatsoever for them to remain just as powerful at level 34 as they are at level 1, while retaining the same, insane comparative spell point costs... My suggestion is baseline 50 (Empower, Emp Healing, Intensify) or 100 (Maximize) and 3 (Emp) or 6 (Max) spellpower bonus per character level.
---
There's a lot of math that goes into maximizing DPS. However, even without the Reaper Nerfs that everyone seemingly bemoans, Casters just fall behind in epics. Why is that? Well, it's baked into the base systems. I don't claim to be an expert, but this is my take.
(I'm using THF for my weapon examples, as it's the most straightforward of weapon types, and least powerful, performance wise. SWF is currently overperforming and TWF is a solid choice, but due to their additional stats they are harder to compare to magic.)
---
<->
Damage Doubling:
Doublestrike vs Spell Critical
Purpose: Percentage chance to double all damage from a damage source
Doublestrike: A common effect is expected to hit 100% by 34. If this check succeeds, multiply damage by 2.
Available in Enhancement/Insight/Quality/Artifact/Profane/Morale/Sacred/Action Boost/Alchemical... and up to +15 from Iconic/Epic Past Lives.
Huge amounts are available from enhancement trees. Medium amounts are available from Epic Destinies.
Spell Critical: A common effect that is expected to hit about 50-70% by 34, if you have a specific kind of build. If this check succeeds, multiply damage by (base) 2.
Available in Equipment/Insight/Quality. Up to +6 from Epic Past Lives, and only for Elemental spells.
Small amounts (At best, +15) are available from enhancement trees. Zero is available from Epic Destinies.
Why am I equating Doublestrike to Spell Critical? Well, the weapon critical system is far too complicated to compare to the linear spell critical system, where a Blightcaster has the same critical chances as an acid Sorcerer.
(And Doubleshot going above 100 is something entirely different, but beyond the scope of this thread)
<->
Basic Scalar:
Melee Power vs Spell Power
Purpose: Percentage scalar to total damage.
Melee Power: A rare effect that supposedly can hit 200-300 by 34.
Spell Power: A common effect that supposedly can hit 1200-1400 by 34.
Spellpower getting this high is deceptive in a way: Just because the numbers are better does not make the damage better. The issue though, is that untangling the other issues with Magic would require pulling back Spell Power... which would lead to a stat squish.
Additionally, many things now scale with above 100% Melee Power, narrowing the gap between the two even further.
<->
Maximizing damage source effectiveness
Combat Style Feats vs Metamagics
Purpose: Base stats/feat tax.
Combat Style Feats: A 3-feat line that provides structure and damage scaling. Usually increases base stat scaling, and provides a pittance of Melee Power. In Epics, has Perfect Weapon Fighting.
Metamagics: A 3-feat line that is incredibly powerful early, but is only effectively applied to metamagics early (due to insane costs), and become mandatory late to enable DPS. In Epics, has Intensify Spell.
In this case, I am talking about Empower/Maximize/Quicken. A bonus 225 Spell Power at level 6, for example, is an insane amount of Spell Power. At 34, it's disappointing. According to my estimates earlier, even with Intensify added to the mix, with 1400 Spell Power, the three Metamagics only provide a 21% increase in Spell Power at significant resource cost.
In comparison, the full Two Handed Fighting line provides a total of 250% base stat scaling for your weapon: And more importantly, it's providing this base damage before Melee Power. The issue with the Metamagic feats is that they're modifying spell power a stat which gets very, very high at higher levels. As many would know, you want to balance your factors to raise the maximum value. 3x3x3 is higher than 5x2x2 after all.
<->
Chance to affect targets
To-Hit vs Spell DC
Purpose: Number to compare against target's base stats
To Hit: A relatively easy stat to scale that has many options. Possesses both flat and percentage scaling.
DCs: A relatively difficult stat to scale that is relatively slim pickings. Gets a lot of power from Past Lives.
I don't actually have an answer for this one, as SSG 'solved' this issue by making enemies nearly impossible to hit with or effect with DCed spells. Good job?
<->
Conditional Damage Multiplication
Criticals vs Spell Critical Damage.
Purpose: Boosts damage by a significant amount sometimes.
Weapon Criticals: On an average build, you're using a 17-20x3. On specific builds, you expect a 14-20x4. Then there's Critical Damage on 19-20, and active attacks that improve critical threat range and damage... Even if it critically strikes half as often, it multiplies damage by 4... before active attacks.
(I'm not even going to go into the Patience feat, which THF builds probably would take anyway...)
Spell Critical Damage: At best +71% for the average build. This is with top of the line gear, single stack of Epic Spell Power, matching Legendary Feat (assuming your chosen spell type even has a matching legendary feat), out of Wellspring. At best, multiplies damage by about 1.9. Warlocks can go higher but then they're forced to using only SLAs for damage (Eldritch Blast is a whole 'nother can of worms)
<->
Base Damage
Weapons + Stats + Effects vs Spell Base Damage.
Purpose: Base damage to be multiplied by scalars.
Physical Base Damage: Scales linearly with improvements in gear and levels. Always relevant, as it's easy to grab the nearest upgrade. At cap, Main Stats of 100+ are easy and consistent. Deadly, Insightful Deadly, and other effects can scale damage further. Has options to raise [w]. Every little bonus matters. Even junk active attacks can serve a purpose due to percentage bonuses to damage.
Magical Base Damage: Scales linearly with caster level. Spells fall behind as MCL caps are hit. No Base Stat scaling. No item base damage scaling. Due to the way damage dice work, old tools stop mattering. No one cares about low level SLAs, they don't do any damage whatsoever.
And here's the real meat of it all. Physical damage, unlike magical damage, actually has support for what they do. All of the issues with casters could be fixed if there were consistent ways to add base damage to spells, be it through scaling off of your base stats, or through enhancement trees.
This would resolve the godawful issue with spells falling behind, as the rising tide of base damage would help smooth things out. It'd justify the worthless d6+3 Epic Strikes, as 'real' casters would have base damage to help them along.
<->
Damage per Second
Weapon Attack Speed vs Spell Cooldown
Purpose: Damage equalization over period of time.
Weapon Attack Speed: Alacrity exists as an option. Haste Boost exists. Haste exists. BAB increases attack speed. Single Weapon Fighting exists. An endgame level character swings a weapon at least twice as fast as a level 1.
Spell Cooldown: Exists, but is limited. At best, a character receives -30% Spell Cooldown, by sacrificing Spell Criticals, and taking T4 Draconic + Shadowdancer. It does not scale with level, it does not scale with enhancements.
As stronger spells tend to have longer cooldowns too, this means that the benefits from stronger spells tend to fall behind.
How would you even fix this? The devs have obviously convinced themselves that Spell Cooldown is 'too powerful to spread around as a permanent effect' (never mind that spell cooldowns only affect class spells, and requires the character to spend more SP using metamagics than just mashing SLAs...)
50% Spell Cooldown reduction, the highest amount, is currently tied to damned Machrotechnic as an Epic Moment! If anything, there should be a 10/20/30% Spell Cooldown Action Boost available to most caster trees, to incentivize burst windows. There's a slot in Savant/Archmage on tier 2: Throw in Action Boost: Spell Cooldowns!
I'm not even going into cast times, as a slow cast time utterly bricks effectiveness of specific spells. Who actually uses Mass Heal, when a better option in Cure Critical Mass exists?
<->So, assuming all things were equal besides the spell power/melee power divide (they aren't), an optimized character tends to have 4-6x more Spell Power than an optimized Melee Power build.
However, a Melee build swings their weapon far more than 4-6x the speed at which a caster can get an equal 'tiered' spell out, have more bonuses, don't use resources, and have explosive criticals that magic users could only dream of. Even disregarding throwing in 'filler' spells, the average caster has one or two viable spells (Polar Ray, Iceberg, Moonspear for Cold Sorcerer), with a few big cooldowns that can be disregarded.
I don't know how to fix them entirely, but the first step would be adding an action boost to reduce spell cooldown in caster trees, available early. This would help provide a burst damage window similar to Physical Damage dealers with Haste Boost, while also incentivising a caster to 'nova', and blow all their spellpoints, but run out of resources earlier.
Secondly, perhaps adding something to Magical Training that adds a flat amount of damage to each spell you cast, equal to your casting modifier? Something that provides a floor, even for your first level spells. If providing this in heroics is unacceptable, tie it to being at least character level 20.
Third suggestion is to make offensive metamagics (Empower, Maximize, Empower Healing, Intensify) grant less spell power by base, but now gain additional spellpower per character level. It makes no sense whatsoever for them to remain just as powerful at level 34 as they are at level 1, while retaining the same, insane comparative spell point costs... My suggestion is baseline 50 (Empower, Emp Healing, Intensify) or 100 (Maximize) and 3 (Emp) or 6 (Max) spellpower bonus per character level.
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