Shear-buckler
Master of reactions
Physical DPS is overperforming, reapers and other mobs that used to be tanky and pose a threat to players now melt instantly to physical DPS.
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Equating Combat Stats: AKA: Why exactly doesn't caster scale as strongly as Physical builds?
- Thread starter Underflow
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Smokewolf
Frequently banned member.
I have yet to see this, but I'll just take your word for it. Regardless... my point really being that a round of Nerfs has never helped, all it really does is set the stage for the next.
Personally, I'd rather see casters raised up, than physical DPS get hammered.
Shear-buckler
Master of reactions
Nerfs help all the time. It is the focus on buffing that is causing issues. Melees and ranged were buffed so hard that they are now making casters feel bad in comparison and they make the content too easy.
Balancing should be done with both nerfs and buffs, the DDO-style of balance by constant buffs only creates more imbalance from the fact that it is impossible to catch everything in a buff wave and that which gets buffed outpaces the content. Whatever gets left behind becomes useless, which we can easily see in the game today.
Bit dog barks first.
I'd say lay off the meth, since that's what it would take to think that my post was a: a rant, b: divisive, and c: competitive.
Necrodancer
Ancient beyond measure
Usually agree with you but not on this. Sorry but I've seen packs of mobs in R10 with doom reapers (as in plural) get melted and obliterated like they were kobolds in front of dragons, all this done multiple times by inquisitives and melee alike.
You cannot have the highest level of difficulty were monsters get bullied by toons that are not even doing their best. As I already wrote, if your average Joe has that gargantuan insane dps, it's no wonder we see rats with over 10K hp and raid boss with hundreds of millions. Also, it's worth pointing out that the game gets balanced on the average of what people play, if everyone plays what is a "de facto" Hecatonchaire or a nuclear mobile platform a la Metal Gear, it only leaves casters even further behind.
No, the game needs to be rebalanced. This fantasy powerplay has gone way too far and some heavy handed nerfs need to be handed copiously such as that people will start to re think if they are able to R6 and leave R10 for the really experienced, well geared and most skilled players. I've tried inquisitive, you need barely half a neuron in third place in your head to play one and finish quests on R1. Nerf everything and rebalance from there until all classes are on even footing and nobody gets do everything at once anymore.
No arcane supremacy, no melee supremacy, no ranged supremacy. If you want to press a single button and watch monsters die, go play warframe, there's a lore reason in that game why they are so much stronger than anything else.
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GrizzlyOso
Well-known member
Nice - let me see if I got this right in response to facts A,B,C:
<random idiom>
I’d lay off the <drug that DARE scared us about> , because my post wasn’t fact A, B, and C.
Super compelling.
My very low life Inq can do 10 mill in 2:28 to the airship cannon. He is neither optimally build nor fully geared. If someone can do 8 mill in a min I dont know but it does not seem entirely unlikely.
Smokewolf
Frequently banned member.
I hear yeah but I've seen this time and time again and it never ends well with Nerfs. What I'm suggesting is to instead raise casters up and leave the other classes alone. Physical DPS is happy, Casters are happy, and Dev's for once look like they know what they're doing.
Wrong. Bored is not happy.
I've very skeptical that 8 mil/min is at all common. LH Karliath has about 40m hp, and I've never been in a party that that's taken that down in under a minute. Yegora times suggest 2m/min is a good-dps number vs a moving target.
8mil/min (only dust and bring darkness) is the top end of ranged builds, it's a humongous number that should not be common, yet it is achievable.
2mil/min is abysmal tho, even my wizard can do better then that.
LurkingVeteran
Well-known member
You can stack a bit more crit on a caster than that, but otherwise the numbers look ok.
However, one thing often missed in these comparisons is that melee only need to hold the mouse button down to get these numbers, while the caster needs to time his rotation and manage SP - which is a bottleneck both for many builds and many players.
Since they added % special attacks for weapons, this is an additional, large % increase if you manage it well, and that is on top of the left-mouse-button damage calculated above.
It is I think also easier to get high attack hit % than low evo save %. Casters really need to max their caster stat and on top of that DC bonuses, by stacking multiple enchancements, item and feat bonuses for this, while martial classes can pick up a T1 trance + accuracy item and call it a day. (EDIT: Trance.)
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Lazuli
Well-known member
The truth is, I agree that weapon users—ranged and melee alike—are overperforming. But I also understand what Smokewolf is saying.
SSG doesn't know how to handle nerfs. Its track record is lamentable in this regard, and it invariably ends up destroying builds and playstyles instead of properly adjusting them. What's more, once they're overnerfed, they never stop to consider the results and adjust upwards again.
That's why I'm not defending nerfs. Because of that, and because SSG's nerfs tend to target the core functionality of builds, not the synergies that catapult them over the top. The result of this is that it's always the players with the worst builds who get the nerfs, and the players who are truly overperforming who notice them the least.
Honestly, it's better to tweak casters, balance all styles, and then look at making global changes to mobs.
And it would help if they stopped focusing their entire design on DPS and started considering other facets of the game that aren't DPS. We're in this situation precisely because the only thing that matters is DPS.
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Alpha Tester
Well-known member
They know it all.
They designed it. They don't play the game but read in the forums that first lifers used to be angry with casters because they couldn't touch the mobs in heroics so the company nerfed casters at ENDGAME.
Didn't solved the problem. Created other problems but silenced the angry voices. It's not crappy design, it was designed to fail, it was a choice so doesn't matter teach them their mechanics. What would help is a player council or a developer that actually play the game so it wouldn't look like an eternal beta test.
They designed it. They don't play the game but read in the forums that first lifers used to be angry with casters because they couldn't touch the mobs in heroics so the company nerfed casters at ENDGAME.
Didn't solved the problem. Created other problems but silenced the angry voices. It's not crappy design, it was designed to fail, it was a choice so doesn't matter teach them their mechanics. What would help is a player council or a developer that actually play the game so it wouldn't look like an eternal beta test.
Necrodancer
Ancient beyond measure
I get you. The patient needs surgery but the only surgeon is a drunkard with a rusty chainsaw and a terrible track record.
EDIT
NO! I'm not talking about Teh_Troll
Shuriken at least was really only single target or if you could get mobs in a straight line you could do some AOE. Now Inquis can do crazy DPS vs single and multi with zero effort.
But the thing is, melee can do crazy DPS vs single (TWF), multi (THF) or both (SWF) while casters are so far behind the pack. And TWF are not so bad at the AOE as well. They just dont get the 100% uptime of Strikethrough.
Now, if you get lucky and are in a dungeon where 75% of the mobs arent deathwarded and you have 200 lives and BIS gear you can DC to win. Else, you can do very good but not insane DPS unless you are silly enough to take your caster into an R7+ dungeon.
Again, there are 2 very simple and very obvious changes SSG could make.
1. remove the caster nerf in R7+. This hurts no-one and means people may consider bringing casters along in high end dungeons - but still probably wont
2. make the R7+ nerf apply across the board so that people complaining about how easy the game is get a slightly more challenging game - but still probably dont hurt ranged and the couple of crazy melee builds
A tougher job which is far beyond the capabilities of SSG would be to revisit DC builds and think about how to make newer players better off without making those 200 life players into Q-like entities.
Alpha Tester
Well-known member
When the nerf came developers still used the old forum. Go there, check some old posts about the theme and you will see.
Also "No, they don't. They can't even pinpoint the source of the lag that plague the game you said "they designed"."
Dude, it's not because a company don't tell it's customers how a sausage is made that the company don't know how to do it. Of many theories one succeeded: they where wrong about how much processing they should rent on the new server due to extra players and accounts since many people created them to farm rare gear. This change alone a couple weeks ago changed the lag for the best.
Just because they don't comunicate to you or other players doesn't means they don't know what was happening.
You mean like AC? That stat is all or nothing. A d20 system doesn’t work anymore when you have to hit bonuses of +100. I think PRR was a good iteration, but totally introduced wrong in the game. AC should have been a multiplier of PRR. Or even better have a different AC mechanic altogether. Something a critical hit confirmation. If you get a hit scored, there could be another behind the scenes roll for a second chance, based on your AC to reduce the chance. This would promote players to invest in to hit and AC both (since monsters would have the defense).
Agree we need more immersive combat mechanics.
woq
Well-known member
If you can get 14x multi from spellpower on a caster, you can get more than x4 multi on mp for similar investment. 300mp is starter numbers without boosts outside reaper unless you're playing a very non-meta build. My current toon - a dl 12/ 6 monk / 2 warlock - (not 3x comp on any heroic/racial/epic, on a non-mp race, without full rp boosts on gear, without vkf, without arcane warrior...) is sitting at 334 mp in town unbuffed..
And ranged gets far, far more than that. If anything, those numbers are skewing in favor of spellcasters and pretending that melee/ranged are told not to wear the good stuff and not to put too much sent xp in their stuff.