Spears and +Poison Damage

[Xach]

It would appear that the SK direct damage Spear of Agony spell is unaffected by +Poison damage on items.

Is this intentional or an oversight?

 

[Xach]

Okay cool.

Thanks for the speedy response.

 

[Manguadi]

What about making them damage based instead, or implementing more than one type of inclusion criteria? If they were damage based it could scale based on the actual damage dealt by the spell, making for an equal % benefit to all classes.

 

[Manguadi]

If you want the benefits to be unequal then there's nothing wrong with that (I just want it to be intentional), but I'm not really clear on what you mean about moon comet.

Moon comet is not a good spell and needs all the help in the world.

Enchanter nukes are basically ignorable.
Mage rain are more efficient even on a single target.
Necro dots are absurdly powerful.
Clerics only nuke when the situation is trivial.
Shaman relic is just as efficient as moon comet.
Druid nightfire is terrible but druids are terrible in general so it's probably just a feature.

I guess if you wanted to robin hood to the classes whose spells suck you could make it scale with damage/mana ratio... in reverse.

 

[Manguadi]

If you're going to say that my use of "equal" is meaningless, then saying that moon comet gets a "bigger" power increase has to fall into the same category.

In any circumstance, I think we're looking at different parts of the equation here. Every type of scaling schema you or I could dream up would be unequal in some way; my advocating for wizards is based on the fact that all they do is damage and so it seems obvious that itemization which strictly affects damage would be geared towards benefiting them. Let's level at the point of pure damage.

Claws: 2580 base damage
Moon Comet: 2575
Sun Storm: 2955

The top 3 damage spells for the 3 dps int casters would actually benefit moon comet the least under my schema. However, the spell for which wizards are most useful in ikisith, RRR, would benefit incredibly. This new elemental damage stat has amazing potential for making gear on int casters fun instead of an incredibly frustrating dance of focus effects, and I think it's worthwhile to take the time to figure out how to balance its usefulness across the classes.

caveat: My whole separate but equal diatribe could be summarily dismissed by saying "I itemize with the differences in mind." Because it's not like every item is both druid and wizard usable.

 

[Manguadi]

I wouldn't have expected elemental damage to even be crit, to be honest. I'm also surprised that wizard crit rates are nearly double necro crit rates. And I'm mostly confused because ikisith is the first place I've seen a wizard outparse anything (in sanctum they were competing with beastlords) since mid ToT.

Maybe wizards are just bad players.

You win the numbers game though! And that pleases me.

But I still think it is queer that the analog to ferocity works backwards through the dps classes. It would be like if beastlords somehow got the most out of ATK.

 

[Cyzaine]

One of the major guiding principles for Ikisith encounters is that the classes are better balanced around shorter (lets use 10 minutes as an average) fights. Sanctum, Thaz and other high end places had significantly longer fights. After that point Necros (or at least the 1 necro in a raid who lands the festering) start to really out pace the other casters, and melee classes without limits (arrows) start out pacing everyone else. Don't really think it has much to do with bad players, so much as using HP to make fights 'harder' and thus longer.

 

[Manguadi]

Sanctum fights ran just under 10 minutes typically, not that that changes your point. Also, not to take away from your point (because it's good and right), but mages and wizards still suffer in typical xp groups. Redesigning encounters to suit classes works, but the flaws in the classes that created the need for specialized content still exist. I probably shouldn't say flaws in the classes; higher out of combat mana regen would fix the grouping problem, and as long as all encounters are designed around a particular length it would continue to work.

Also, my point about bad players is that according to zaela's math, moon comet is superior to claws of the chill except for resist adjust, yet our mage regularly outdamaged our wizards (not counting mage pet).

 

[Kazimir]

Right now the cut-off to benefit from the elemental damage code is 200+ base mana cost on the spell, which boots out the low-cost spears by a long shot.

Making it spell-level based would probably be doable and definitely a better way to go, I'll look into it.

So this is worthless for most pre65s then? for clarification

 

[Cyzaine]

So this is worthless for most pre65s then? for clarification

Well...

Right now the cut-off to benefit from the elemental damage code is 200+ base mana cost on the spell, which boots out the low-cost spears by a long shot.

So really the spell means little. Ice Comet is 400 mana for example and is a level 49 spell. Avalance is 200 mana at level 39, but who really uses that spell anyway. So to answer your question, it is worthless for spells that cost under 200 mana (kinda like zaela already mentioned)... for now.

 

[robopirateninja]

And also not taking into account that wizards get to double (and quadruple) elemental damage way more than anyone else, too.

Wait, where is elemental damage added now? IIRC the last time it was discussed elemental damage was added to the final output of your spell, after calculations from focus effects, other elemental focuses and crits, such that 1 elemental damage = 1 more damage per cast. Is this no longer the case?

In as much as no one really cares how efficient their nuke is if it does low damage.

This is not really true for every class, although with shorter ikisith fights it is now actually possible to do more total damage with high-dps low-efficiency spells, whereas in older content (especially when you aren't geared to the tits) it is entirely better to use shit like your ancient to maximize the total damage you get from your manabar, since you'd be oom and 5m nuking no matter what anyways.

Also something that for some reason got left out of the discussion on moon comet:
spell/mana/mang dpm/zaela dpm
Moon Comet: 525 mana/4.9 dpm/6.8 dpm
Claws of the Chill 480 mana/5.3 dpm/ 6.5 dpm
Sun Storm 474 mana/6.2 dpm/ 6.5 dpm PER TARGET

At base spell levels, every piece of +mana and +ft gear is worse in terms of improving your raid when given to a wizard instead of a necro or magician. It would be nice if elemental dmg were different.

Also, my point about bad players is that according to zaela's math, moon comet is superior to claws of the chill except for resist adjust, yet our mage regularly outdamaged our wizards (not counting mage pet).

Resists do kind of matter, especially when comparing -20 and -200. Also Wizards are required to spend some of their time casting spells that cost mana and time and do no damage at all.

 

[Cyzaine]

Wait, where is elemental damage added now? IIRC the last time it was discussed elemental damage was added to the final output of your spell, after calculations from focus effects, other elemental focuses and crits, such that 1 elemental damage = 1 more damage per cast. Is this no longer the case?

After focus effects/tomes yes, but before the crit roll. The thought process being it would be inconsistent for say a DoT to be able to regularly hit higher than a crit given enough elemental damage.