Question about Elemental Damage Changes:

[Apokriphos]

Elemental Damage

In preperation for the new items in Ikisith and beyond, the functionality of +elemental damage has been changed! From this point forward every point of +fire damage will increase the damage of fire spells, every point of +magic will increase magic spells etc... This allows us greatly flexibility in items for casters and melee alike. For Rain spells damage is split across each wave, for DoT's the damage is added in all together to the last tic. Spells must cost more than 300 mana to be affected by elemental damage, or be a weapon proc. +elemental damage will not help increase the damage on Festering curse. Please bug report any oddities you may come across regarding this addition.

Are bard dots affected by this change/increase as well?

 

[Vartenaal]

for spells will it be like an additional focus % or a raw dmg increase? ie 5fire dmg = +5% dmg or +5 dmg total?

 

[Manguadi]

Why is it added to total damage instead of base damage? Does it affect melee damage the same way in that you get more benefit the weaker you are? It is way better for nightfire than it is for archaic moon comet which is pretty strange.

Also, this excludes enchanters.

edit: lost the attitude

 

[Waldoff]

What he is saying that is the closer the spells mana is to the threshold the better the effect of the elemental damage.

This would be an issue if all classes got the exact same elemental damage throughout the tiers but we will most likely itemize it specifically higher dependent on class and it will not be a linear increase across tiers.

Edit: And obv we missed enchanters on the threshold. Easy enough to smack it down. We just dont want wizards 5 mana nuking for a bajillion.

 

[kibeth]

Gotta make sure someones not getting a BETTER free increase than you are, don't ya know.

At first, I looked at this and said wow..... this has got to be about the weakest idea I've seen come out in quite a while. After thinking a little bit, I can see some practical reasons, but I guess I'd have to really see the planned amounts of certain elements in certain tiers to really make a judgement on the plan. If the entire point is just to give people a little bit of free DPS, then I guess it doesn't really matter what the amount added is, it's free, don't complain right?

I won't mention the tinfoil reasonings i see behind this, simply because I don't have any items yet to point to as examples. But surely once some items are spread around, someone is bound to point it out.

 

[Manguadi]

I'm sorry I made a very angry post for really no reason. And I made a mistake with bad head-math.

My intent was to show that the less damage the spell does, the change in dps is greater. This is obviously not fixed by putting the damage on the base instead of the end.

Ultimately, this is really an issue of itemization between priests and int casters so that druids don't end up getting vastly more than wizards.

 

[Xeldan]

I'm sorry I made a very angry post for really no reason. And I made a mistake with bad head-math.

My intent was to show that the less damage the spell does, the change in dps is greater. This is obviously not fixed by putting the damage on the base instead of the end.

Ultimately, this is really an issue of itemization between priests and int casters so that druids don't end up getting vastly more than wizards.

You're right. World of Warcraft had this issue with flat damage increases early on too. It's something the staff will have to overcome, but Woldaff is a smart guy so I think in the end it will all make sense.

At first, I looked at this and said wow..... this has got to be about the weakest idea I've seen come out in quite a while.

Yeah, damn the staff for figuring out a way to make elemental damage useful for casters too. What a weak idea.

 

[Manguadi]

I won't mention the tinfoil reasonings i see behind this, simply because I don't have any items yet to point to as examples. But surely once some items are spread around, someone is bound to point it out.

Can you give an example of an item that would make you tinfoil? Does it say like, GM toon character equippable only?

As an aside, what do you think tinfoiling means?

 

[Asura_]

I won't mention the tinfoil reasonings i see behind this, simply because I don't have any items yet to point to as examples. But surely once some items are spread around, someone is bound to point it out.

What reasoning might that be? Feel free to indulge us with your ideas so we can better understand what you're trying to accomplish.

PS: I heard the KGB are involved with SOD. Coincidence?

 

[vistachiri]

You're right. World of Warcraft had this issue with flat damage increases early on too. It's something the staff will have to overcome, but Woldaff is a smart guy so I think in the end it will all make sense.



Yeah, damn the staff for figuring out a way to make elemental damage useful for casters too. What a weak idea.

It's interesting at its heart. I'm curious to see how it will play out, and am hoping that it doesn't end up as a yet another thing casters have to worry about on their gear in addition to juggling several million foci (as it would be were it sparse). Will current items be seeing elemental damage added to them?

Also, what pieces are we talking that this gets added from? As I noticed Zaela mentioned it would not work with augs.


I would like to point out as well that this drastically increases the power of procs on weapons if its a flat increase, being of alot more utility to classes that do melee, and healers that possess acceptable melee skills, than casters who mostly cannot due to lack of skill, lack of sturdiness, and of course rains.

Also GOOOO Imeriaz Frozen Antimatrix Maul!

 

[Dzillon]

About necros it kinda loses interest it seems, if magical / disease increment doesn't work on lifetaps like Lifebane/Gangrenous (why ? they're more than 300 mana) and the last tick of the dot is the least likely to be seen - speaking in group situations mainly.
I guess it would be too complicated to spread them like rains although it would make the most sense to me. Would it then be overpowered to do exactly the same, but first tick ?

 

[Vartenaal]

PS: I heard the KGB are involved with SOD. Coincidence?

we have our fingers in many, many different tasty pies.....

PS the government is always watching you

 

[Cyzaine]

About necros it kinda loses interest it seems, if magical / disease increment doesn't work on lifetaps like Lifebane/Gangrenous (why ? they're more than 300 mana) and the last tick of the dot is the least likely to be seen - speaking in group situations mainly.
I guess it would be too complicated to spread them like rains although it would make the most sense to me. Would it then be overpowered to do exactly the same, but first tick ?

I was responsible for the (initial) coding for this change, and my only SoD character is a necromancer, so let me try to explain what was going on in my head for this. I would have preferred the damage to be spread out evenly across all ticks, but unlike rains (which are always 3 waves), DoTs vary greatly in tick duration. Besides alot of extra division every time a spell is cast, rounding becomes a huge deal, in some instances for some of the longer dots, making the bonus near meaningless.

For example, lets take the 6 tick Marlows Creamation, a very bread and butter DoT for most Necros. Assuming no other bonuses, if you had +12 fire dmg, the damage would go from 420 a tick to 422 a tick. Simple 12/6(tics). But if you had +13 fire dmg, 13/6(ticks) would net you 2.1666 dmg bonus per tick. Only due to how all the rest of spell coding works, it would actually only be 2 dmg bonus per tick. Same with +14, +15, +16, and +17 fire dmg. The problem is compounded further with a spell like Splurt or Scitterpox.

The choice then became, pick an arbitrary point to throw in the whole bonus, or give free damage to necromancers by adding the dot duration to the elemental damage bonus. The second is not reasonable, and I didn't like the idea of rounding bonuses into oblivion. At least with mages, the rounding is consistent for every rain; we can fix that rounding error if we deem it a big issue with minimal extra computations. It really isn't elegantly possible with DoTs.

300 mana was chosen, again, arbitrarily. It was not our intention to exclude enchanters, simply an over sight we didn't discuss properly. Lifetaps currently do not gain anything from +elemental damage, as they are not considered 'nukes' by the spell engine, which is where the changes went in. This is due to fears of unbalancing lifetaps from weapon procs and Shadow Knights, more than a sleight against necromancers. It is unlikely to change unless some VERY good reasons can be thought up.

Many games have the +elemental damage. I played WoW and am VERY aware of the ridiculousness that +elemental damage on say, a Warlock, had. This was due almost entirely to bad itemization on Blizzards behalf, and the only good solution, is good itemization and drawbacks for stacking elemental damage. At the moment stacking really isn't possible, but rest assured that those who choose burst may find longevity hurt. In my opinion choices are the bread and butter of MMO's (even if it will mess with the top 5 list a bit in the future).

This change went live before Ikisith for reasons that pretty much are this thread, to get the bitching and complaining that any change (even changes that only help the player base) tend to bring. So feel free to keep complaining and adding good points and oversights to this discussion. It only makes the game better.

 

[Dzillon]

Thanks for taking the time to reply on this. I didn't think about SKs about the lifetaps, but I figured the coding to spread the dmg was complicated.
Otherwise maybe I read wrong but about the dot +elemental damage , why not on first tick rather than last ? (unless it's in "give free damage to necromancers by adding the dot duration to the elemental damage bonus" but I'm not sure I understand this part)

 

[Maethorr]

One thing i don't get is why he was so paranoid over druids nukes getting the biggest bonus.

Seriously, If I ever saw a druid nuking on a raid (unless the shit had really started hitting the fan and the mob was at 5%) I would start chewing him out for that crap, and i play a raid druid, a druid nuking is just burning a valuable heal. The only nuke I would ever want to see them casting is the fire debuff.

 

[Cyzaine]

The 'free damage' choice mentioned would simply be rounding up the decimal to the next highest integer, thus creating damage where none should exist. In the 6 tick DoT example above, +14 fire damage works out to 2.3333 dmg/tick; the choices are round down to 2 dmg, thus destroying damage, or round up to 3, thus creating damage. This doesn't touch on the 'where' in a DoT the damage should be added.

I picked the last tick, because it was easy to do so. No magic in the choice, and figured that an exploit or loop hole was least likely be found/exploited if thats where it showed up. I also worked on the (possibly wrong) assumption that this was to be a more 'raid focused' change, thus mobs would be more likely to get hit by the full DoT.

I can see the argument for it going on the first tick rather than last, but I would than also need to adjust how bard DoTs are affected. This is something the staff will have to discuss.

 

[Cyzaine]

Really the true impact of all this comes down to itemization.

Will this GREATLY affect melee procs? Yes, if we start adding a ton of elemental damage to melee gear and not just their weapon.

Could this cause druids to be better nukers than wizards? Yes, if we give way way way too much elemental damage to priest gear, and none at all to wizards.

Should we implement an elemental damage cap? Perhaps we should. But as it stands there is none, and assuming we aren't stupid about items we put it on, it is probably unnecessary.

There are two benefits of this change. For the players the benefit is flexibility. Do you want your druid to have a healthy amount of nuke power? Hunt down the +elemental gear and have fun, it'll probably cost you in other areas of your character, but the choice is yours. For the overworked item devs, it gives a different way to enhance gear, besides loading it with 5 more mana and 5 more hp, flexibility we really want for Ikisith.

And hey, if this doesn't work out in the end, we just shut it off. I don't believe that is going to be a problem though.

 

[Nodnal]

Really the true impact of all this comes down to itemization.

Will this GREATLY affect melee procs? Yes, if we start adding a ton of elemental damage to melee gear and not just their weapon.

Could this cause druids to be better nukers than wizards? Yes, if we give way way way too much elemental damage to priest gear, and none at all to wizards.

Should we implement an elemental damage cap? Perhaps we should. But as it stands there is none, and assuming we aren't stupid about items we put it on, it is probably unnecessary.

There are two benefits of this change. For the players the benefit is flexibility. Do you want your druid to have a healthy amount of nuke power? Hunt down the +elemental gear and have fun, it'll probably cost you in other areas of your character, but the choice is yours. For the overworked item devs, it gives a different way to enhance gear, besides loading it with 5 more mana and 5 more hp, flexibility we really want for Ikisith.

And hey, if this doesn't work out in the end, we just shut it off. I don't believe that is going to be a problem though.

This sums everything up quite well. The thing I love about changes is...everyone always gets mad about change (I will admit I have done this before). If the change is a nerf, of course players get mad. If the change is a STRICT improvement for players across the board, then people STILL get mad.

Why do people think that gnome bonus, tomes, Tmap rings, specializiation mods on augs, etc are small bonuses and then they freak out when people will have 1-10 elemental damage added to their nukes or procs? I am sure the Devs will balance this and not give level 10 bard a weapon that 10 elemental damage added to its proc. This change is good because it adds another usage for elemental damage for casters, it helps procs, and it still helps weapons. What is there to complain about? Rarely is their a straight increase to the power level of SoD raiders, and yet we still find a way to be mad about it.

Overall, I really like the change and am excited to see how the itemization will play out in Ikisith (or if old items will be rejiggered at all). Even if the damage is only applied to the last tick of bard dots, at least we get affected at all. Good work to Zak for thinking of adding this, and thanks to the Devs for implementing this.

As for adding this damage to base or after all mods...I think adding it at the end as it is now is a lot more reasonable. Even 10-20 damage added to base could add up to be quite a bit more with AA, elemental focus, Damage Inc, Tomes, etc.

As for using a cap to elemental damage...it may be possible down the road. But it is nice to see items for casters with BIG elemental damage (like the PoFrost 2h) but kind of lackluster stats otherwise. My only complaint is that if you give druids too much elemental damage, we will have too many Seferons running around letting the tank die after landing that amazing crit blast.

Anyways...good work on the change, I really like it!

 

[Malluas]

ok so i get this right.... you don't need items with cold bonus to get the bonus, just a 300+ mana spell thats a elemental nuke/ae/rain/dot?

if it depends on gear, Ashpyre needs to be changed to 15 cold dmg (makes no sense given the zone but doesn't make sense with the changed either since i don't think the clerics or shamans have fire nukes even close to druids) or given some other special effect or something. Even with the bonus fire nukes are not so hot for druids period.

sigh i keep editing..

now that i think about it maybe thaz augs could get these elemental bonus' since its a elemental zone. Aka Fire aug fire bonus, water cold. Earth i would say DR PR, air maybe lightning spells(granted i believe those are magic based so.. not sure with that or just double up earth and fire , water and air with same bonus)

 

[Cyzaine]

While some old gear MIGHT get looked at with this live, it is mainly a change for future items (and items made after the decision to do this change was made public to staff). Don't expect alot of changes or additions to currently existing gear.