Clayness
08-23-2012, 06:46 AM
I'm mainly levelling my evoker cleric these days, finished his exalted angel tree and started working on the unyielding sentinel tree. While I was levelling the exalted angel tree I gotta admit that I grew quite fond of avenging light, it was very cheap, had a reasonably low cooldown and still did a good 300 damage with moderate gear and 900 on crits, on average. I have some melee past lives on my cleric, so I have a Min II and a Lit II greataxe lying around from those days that I still whip out from time to time when the group doesn't require constant healing. When I started levelling the unyielding sentinel tree I saw the Confront Any Foe enhancement and figured it might replace avenging light as a fun little toy to do a bit of extra damage with when I wasn't healing or nuking.
Before I proceed, let us look at the two abilities
Avenging Light
- Tier 1
- Costs 3 SP, which means that a decent cleric or fvs can cast it around one thousand times before running out of SP. Even if they run out of SP, the passive regen is enough to cast it every 6 seconds.
- Has a fairly long range
Confront Any Foe
- Tier 2
- Costs a turn undead attempt, which means that a typical cleric or paladin will be able to cast it fifteen times, roughly, before running out of turn undead attempts. After running out these attempts will be restored at roughly one attempt per every minute and a half if you have the enhancements for it.
- Is melee range
With basically everything about Avenging Light being superior to Confront Any Foe (tier, range and cost) you would think that Confront Any Foe would cause more damage than Avenging Light. But does it? The damage of Confront Any Foe is not modifier by ANYTHING, so the damage caused is, on average, 50. Yes 50. An ability that is higher tier, higher cost, melee instead of ranged causes SIX times less damage on average, at the same price in AP.
I know that there should be difference between the trees, of course there should, and simply giving each tree a damage ability that does the same damage for each tree would be silly. You can make damage abilities different in a great number of ways:
- Have them apply debuffs
- Alter the threat they cause
- Make them cause damage of different types
Use some of these ways to make Confront Any Foe at least.. a little bit useful instead of being the utter trap it is now. Or make it cause significantly more damage (seeing how it has all these limitations compared to avenging light, 400 damage on average would not be over the top if it doesn't have any additional effects).
Instead of evening out the huge damage disparity between the two, you could always make Confront Any Foe better in other ways:
- Make it cause a significant amount of additional threat
- Make it apply blindness (blindness wouldn't be unreasonable since it is often associated with effects that cause light damage, and it would be suitable for a tanking tree since it helps reduce damage)
- Make it reduce the Light resistance on the target for a short duration after being used
Even with one of the additional effects listed above, I still think it should cause quite a bit of extra damage than it does now to be useful, since there are so many situations where the mobs aren't strong enough that you want to bother with debuffing them or keeping their agro, where damage is the main concern. Even with a debuff it should be 200 damage on average (or 400 if it doesn't apply any debuffs or cause extra threat).
Before I proceed, let us look at the two abilities
Avenging Light
- Tier 1
- Costs 3 SP, which means that a decent cleric or fvs can cast it around one thousand times before running out of SP. Even if they run out of SP, the passive regen is enough to cast it every 6 seconds.
- Has a fairly long range
Confront Any Foe
- Tier 2
- Costs a turn undead attempt, which means that a typical cleric or paladin will be able to cast it fifteen times, roughly, before running out of turn undead attempts. After running out these attempts will be restored at roughly one attempt per every minute and a half if you have the enhancements for it.
- Is melee range
With basically everything about Avenging Light being superior to Confront Any Foe (tier, range and cost) you would think that Confront Any Foe would cause more damage than Avenging Light. But does it? The damage of Confront Any Foe is not modifier by ANYTHING, so the damage caused is, on average, 50. Yes 50. An ability that is higher tier, higher cost, melee instead of ranged causes SIX times less damage on average, at the same price in AP.
I know that there should be difference between the trees, of course there should, and simply giving each tree a damage ability that does the same damage for each tree would be silly. You can make damage abilities different in a great number of ways:
- Have them apply debuffs
- Alter the threat they cause
- Make them cause damage of different types
Use some of these ways to make Confront Any Foe at least.. a little bit useful instead of being the utter trap it is now. Or make it cause significantly more damage (seeing how it has all these limitations compared to avenging light, 400 damage on average would not be over the top if it doesn't have any additional effects).
Instead of evening out the huge damage disparity between the two, you could always make Confront Any Foe better in other ways:
- Make it cause a significant amount of additional threat
- Make it apply blindness (blindness wouldn't be unreasonable since it is often associated with effects that cause light damage, and it would be suitable for a tanking tree since it helps reduce damage)
- Make it reduce the Light resistance on the target for a short duration after being used
Even with one of the additional effects listed above, I still think it should cause quite a bit of extra damage than it does now to be useful, since there are so many situations where the mobs aren't strong enough that you want to bother with debuffing them or keeping their agro, where damage is the main concern. Even with a debuff it should be 200 damage on average (or 400 if it doesn't apply any debuffs or cause extra threat).