kmoustakas
Scourge of Xaos
No buffs allowed unless it's by accident. Only nerfs
So . . . when you buffing casters epic strikes and removing the r7+ nerf?
- Thread starter Teh_Troll
- Start date
Lotoc
Well-known member
Ironically the caster crossbows from Den of Vipers are overstatted, caster sticks being crossbows seems to be the ideal because they get treated like 2h caster weapons for some reason and get to have an extra effect while casters don't really care about weapon proficiency or weapon type, as long as you go into macrotech you can pair said overstatted crossbows with a runearm (unless you're a druid).
For some reason 2h melee weapons don't get to have an extra effect though.
This is the better action by far.
Raedier
The Druid
Let's kick the dead horse some more.....
It's very evident that dps casters need a buff, i'd suggest a dev rolls up a 17/3 or 14/4/2 inquis and a pure sorc and tries some r10 content, the difference in effectiveness is colossal, even more so on a toon with less lives and without fully minmaxed gear.
And don't tell me the devs *don't balance for high reaper* if that's true why was a specific r7+ nerf made in the first place?
To be fair tho shuriken, repeater and shadarkai builds are almost as busted for r10 questing as inquis.
Whatever happens, nerf to all styles or buff to casters, SOMETHING needs to happen.
I'd probably prefer something closer to standardising the reaper10 penalty to melee/magical damage to 12%, that would make the most sense to me at this point, it would feel like less of a nerf to the playerbase and less likely to get melee players upset while still adjusting scalars so high reaper feels maybe a little more balanced, it's still in favor of the ranged meta but that is probably going to stay until the next major overhaul.
It's very evident that dps casters need a buff, i'd suggest a dev rolls up a 17/3 or 14/4/2 inquis and a pure sorc and tries some r10 content, the difference in effectiveness is colossal, even more so on a toon with less lives and without fully minmaxed gear.
And don't tell me the devs *don't balance for high reaper* if that's true why was a specific r7+ nerf made in the first place?
To be fair tho shuriken, repeater and shadarkai builds are almost as busted for r10 questing as inquis.
Whatever happens, nerf to all styles or buff to casters, SOMETHING needs to happen.
I'd probably prefer something closer to standardising the reaper10 penalty to melee/magical damage to 12%, that would make the most sense to me at this point, it would feel like less of a nerf to the playerbase and less likely to get melee players upset while still adjusting scalars so high reaper feels maybe a little more balanced, it's still in favor of the ranged meta but that is probably going to stay until the next major overhaul.
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Necrodancer
Ancient beyond measure
The funny part is that casters got absolutely destroyed with nerfs starting from R7+ damage to epic strikes and whatnot. A certain dual xbows play style got the attack speed of a burst ability toned down a little bit.
Yup, SSG doesn't balance for high reapers but it definitely does per class. At this point I'd rather a dev to come to the forum and flat out say the quiet part out loud so to speak, I'd even happily get a ban for this.
Svirfneblin
Well-known member
Nerf to Inquisitive next week!
Anuulified
Well-known member
Wait? There is a r7 nerf?? Must affect only your characters and playstyle.
When will SSG buff casters and remove the R7+ nerf? Six months after you stop calling for crossbow nerfs. So never.
Teh_Troll
Master of Baiting
I'm okay with that if they make the caster epic strikes not garbage.
GrizzlyOso
Well-known member
They tend to do it as soon as I roll a flavor build. I have one of my alts about 3 builds away from a crossbow build so probably nerfed in about a month
Bobbryan2
Well-known member
I rolled up a crossbow build to get this thing moving.
Silvarost
Diehard caster, master of elements
Casters had a series of debuffs, then melees and ranged have had a series of buffs (DH, DL, better weapons and gear). It's possible that after the 1) Caster level nerfs to spells, 2) Damage nerf of over performing spells (DB went from a slightly roided acid well at 2d6+20 to a slightly stronger AOE polar ray), and 3) nerf to spell damage in high reaper, that the 3 damage types were close together performance wise.
Unfortunately, a gap has grown since then with the 15 updates since. I've said it before in another thread, but the last expansion I felt had direct support for caster was Isle of Dread with the different spell damage boosts on gear (which along with green steel is the only good source of it in the game). I'm hoping the new Loft stuff continues on that (since they said crafting would be similar) and gives casters some of the new toys that other builds have been enjoying.
Insert rant of my own, which I've lamented to guildmates at length, about what classes/builds are supposed to do. DPS casters were largely glass cannons, huge firepower but with limited spell point pools and lower defenses. They were limited by distance (no sniping from across the map like bows), forced to the midrange position where they had to be on their toes to avoid accidental annihilation. And that was fun, that was the caster role, to be damage on the edge of the red zone. But now they are more of a glass flintlock, only doing decent damage against higher and higher pools of hitpoints (and even then that decent damage is only by geared out toons with the hard to get gear I mentioned above). Even if they reversed all the nerfs I mentioned, I'd be surprised if I could match much less beat the DPS of a geared modern melee or ranged toon, and even then I'd be keeping an eye on my ever diminishing SP.
Now, my opinion on melee/ranged should be debuffed or if casters should be buffed. I'm on the side of caster buff instead, as the difficulty of content has grown since the nerfs. If everyone was doing 80k+ a second and LoB was the highest raid (boss with sub 4mil hitpoints), then I could see a nerf to reduce damage (not to the point of casters being top DPS, more on pair with the spinning melees but still weaker than say single target DPS like throwers/bows). Since we are not in that era and instead are facing mini bosses with 2-10mil and raid bosses with 60mil+ pools of hp, instead of making everyone suffer I'd just like a boost to be able to play with the big kids again.
Rant over (reserve the rights to edit this post + respond to other comments/opinions)
Unfortunately, a gap has grown since then with the 15 updates since. I've said it before in another thread, but the last expansion I felt had direct support for caster was Isle of Dread with the different spell damage boosts on gear (which along with green steel is the only good source of it in the game). I'm hoping the new Loft stuff continues on that (since they said crafting would be similar) and gives casters some of the new toys that other builds have been enjoying.
Insert rant of my own, which I've lamented to guildmates at length, about what classes/builds are supposed to do. DPS casters were largely glass cannons, huge firepower but with limited spell point pools and lower defenses. They were limited by distance (no sniping from across the map like bows), forced to the midrange position where they had to be on their toes to avoid accidental annihilation. And that was fun, that was the caster role, to be damage on the edge of the red zone. But now they are more of a glass flintlock, only doing decent damage against higher and higher pools of hitpoints (and even then that decent damage is only by geared out toons with the hard to get gear I mentioned above). Even if they reversed all the nerfs I mentioned, I'd be surprised if I could match much less beat the DPS of a geared modern melee or ranged toon, and even then I'd be keeping an eye on my ever diminishing SP.
Now, my opinion on melee/ranged should be debuffed or if casters should be buffed. I'm on the side of caster buff instead, as the difficulty of content has grown since the nerfs. If everyone was doing 80k+ a second and LoB was the highest raid (boss with sub 4mil hitpoints), then I could see a nerf to reduce damage (not to the point of casters being top DPS, more on pair with the spinning melees but still weaker than say single target DPS like throwers/bows). Since we are not in that era and instead are facing mini bosses with 2-10mil and raid bosses with 60mil+ pools of hp, instead of making everyone suffer I'd just like a boost to be able to play with the big kids again.
Rant over (reserve the rights to edit this post + respond to other comments/opinions)
Lotoc
Well-known member
Even when casters were getting the nerfs melee and ranged sustained dps was higher not even accounting for the constraints of SP.
It's just for the majority of players the main content is leveling and reaper quests at cap
In that context casters were king because while melee did far more actions per minute casters did more damage per action and the damage of a single action was enough to clear an entire room of enemies (This was also a huge detriment to dc casters/instakillers because they have to deal with target limits while damage spells don't.)
Now caster damage has been tuned down, health pools got tuned up and now casters need to put out multiple actions to clear healthbars and this has created an environment where melee and ranged being able to perform actions more often has put them ahead even disregarding certain outliers.
The big issue is that as far as interclass balance, yes casters should be capable of highest damage per action but when it's too high it comes at the cost of enemy trash healthpools being balanced around not being oneshot, which makes trash a slog for everyone.
Casters wanting to be relevant damage per second when it comes to raid bosses means needing absolutely absurd damage numbers per action when factored against action rates of cast time vs basic attacks, the main way to approach this that doesn't require overloading the HP on everything so the game isn't too easy for casters is to make the strongest spells for damage per action damage over times - but SSG clearly hates damage over time effects actually being good (see Arcane Pulse being force damage and not scaling, see the change to carrion swarm to keep it away from tanks that effectively killed it for all casters).
Conversely an alternative to help casters in raids is to design raid bosses that actually have elemental weaknesses more often, doubling a caster's damage for being the correct element is more than enough to make a difference, however that's not really going to be a thing because of the overall meta around certain elements being as skewed as it is... For a start it's far more typical for a raid boss to have resistance to every element that a sorc/druid/alchemist just bypasses and everyone is going to be playing cold because it has the best epic destiny support (magus) and best filigree options (frozen wanderer) and the overall build specialization the game pushes towards always playing a singular damage type as a caster.
It's just for the majority of players the main content is leveling and reaper quests at cap
In that context casters were king because while melee did far more actions per minute casters did more damage per action and the damage of a single action was enough to clear an entire room of enemies (This was also a huge detriment to dc casters/instakillers because they have to deal with target limits while damage spells don't.)
Now caster damage has been tuned down, health pools got tuned up and now casters need to put out multiple actions to clear healthbars and this has created an environment where melee and ranged being able to perform actions more often has put them ahead even disregarding certain outliers.
The big issue is that as far as interclass balance, yes casters should be capable of highest damage per action but when it's too high it comes at the cost of enemy trash healthpools being balanced around not being oneshot, which makes trash a slog for everyone.
Casters wanting to be relevant damage per second when it comes to raid bosses means needing absolutely absurd damage numbers per action when factored against action rates of cast time vs basic attacks, the main way to approach this that doesn't require overloading the HP on everything so the game isn't too easy for casters is to make the strongest spells for damage per action damage over times - but SSG clearly hates damage over time effects actually being good (see Arcane Pulse being force damage and not scaling, see the change to carrion swarm to keep it away from tanks that effectively killed it for all casters).
Conversely an alternative to help casters in raids is to design raid bosses that actually have elemental weaknesses more often, doubling a caster's damage for being the correct element is more than enough to make a difference, however that's not really going to be a thing because of the overall meta around certain elements being as skewed as it is... For a start it's far more typical for a raid boss to have resistance to every element that a sorc/druid/alchemist just bypasses and everyone is going to be playing cold because it has the best epic destiny support (magus) and best filigree options (frozen wanderer) and the overall build specialization the game pushes towards always playing a singular damage type as a caster.
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kmoustakas
Scourge of Xaos
The fact you think the devs can actually run anything above hard made me laugh.
Oh you were being serious?
For reference: devs can and have actually died with god mode on (which just shows that their dev mode is also buggy af)
Bobbryan2
Well-known member
How about stacking vulnerabilities for casters... so that they can create the elemental vulnerability over time on raid bosses, etc.
I cant for the life of me understand why every balance change has to be an overwhelming extreme hyperbolic overshoot.
Every.
Damn.
Time.
It's hilariously predictable in a very bad way. Nuke it from from orbit.
They have made even suggesting legitimate testing of classes via a damage meter some sort of blasphemous idea on par with curb stomping kittens in the public square. The whole situation is just anecdotal mess of opinion and ignorance slopped together in a dumpster fire behind a condemned seafood restaurant.
Every.
Damn.
Time.
It's hilariously predictable in a very bad way. Nuke it from from orbit.
They have made even suggesting legitimate testing of classes via a damage meter some sort of blasphemous idea on par with curb stomping kittens in the public square. The whole situation is just anecdotal mess of opinion and ignorance slopped together in a dumpster fire behind a condemned seafood restaurant.
Imagine pre-purchasing as well...
Christhemiss
Maker of Builds
i have a ton of caster builds im excited to play but cant because of this
Teh_Troll
Master of Baiting
The meta needs an enema. Shake things up.