No MORE CRIT FW?!

[vVAnjilaVv]

Wow, I can't believe so many are still complaining about a very insignificant nerf to what will still arguably be the most powerful spell in the game.....seriously....it could be A LOT WORSE.....this is a miniscule change at best.

[Qzipoun]

Seriously? You can't just cast a few more firewalls so they're all hitting and get more chances for crit ticks on every firewall? I'm not sure why people act like you can only have one firewall active at a time...it's just not true.

so... just a thought.

Now:
You cast several Walls of Fire in one spot, and when you get one that crits, it is the only one that damages.

After U8:
You cast several Walls of Fire in one spot, and only the one that crits on that tick deals damage. The more you cast in that spot, the more likely each tick will result in a crit.

So you should still be able to improve your damage by dropping a bunch of Walls of Fire in the same spot. Less improvement, but still some.

Rules of firewall:

1. Firewalls deal two kinds of damage. If you are standing in one, you get hit over time. If you pass in/out of one, you get hit

2. Multiple firewalls (2+) cancel each other out.

3. Only the LAST firewall has effect, not the highest damaging one.

-----

So to answer:

You can't just cast a few more firewalls so they're all hitting and get more chances for crit ticks on every firewall?

the answer is no. No you can't.

I'm not sure why people act like you can only have one firewall active at a time...it's just not true.

It is, with one exception (kiting in/out repeatedly)

And to answer:

You cast several Walls of Fire in one spot, and only the one that crits on that tick deals damage. The more you cast in that spot, the more likely each tick will result in a crit.

No, no that won't work. Only the last firewall cast will have effect on the mob, whether it is critting or not.

--

Yes, you can still kite mobs through a bunch of walls and at times that is more useful (and irrelevant with regards to U8 as there would be so many whether they crit per cast or per tick does not affect anything) but that is rarely the most effective way to do things and most definitely the most annoying to your party members...

The issue here isn't damage, or damage over time. It's damage per time. This change has a serious impact on lingering spells with damage ticks, made critical by absurdly high resistances many mobs have and the lack of alternatives

Wow, I can't believe so many are still complaining about a very insignificant nerf to what will still arguably be the most powerful spell in the game.....seriously....it could be A LOT WORSE.....this is a miniscule change at best.

Actually, it's a huge change. Could it be worse? Sure, they can make firewall heal all enemies 1000 points every tick, but whether it can be worse or not is not the question. Firewall is the most powerful spell in the game. Ironically, it isn't because of how powerful it is but how completely useless all the other ones are. This is fixed by making other spells useful. If we had a ton of useful spells casters could use to effectively do DPS with reasonable SP cost then this change is irrelevant. As of now, firewall (and soon ice storm) is the only useful way to deal damage. Sure, you CAN using other means, but might as well not bother and do something non-DPS.

This whole change came to be just because of the healing aura for clerics. I'd much rather have the clerics in my group have mediocre auras then the arcane have mediocre damage when needed...

[dredre9987]

Plus, it was changed years ago, but in case u didn't know, firewals don't stacks- meaning only 1 damages mob at time, no matter how well you will place them.

space them out and you can get more than one wall of fire to tick at the same time...just tested this again and its still working as always. get a mob between both walls and hold em and you too can see this miracle of fire

[Orratti]

Remember in order to lessen hps and immunities on the monsters you must first lower the damage output of the party. There is no telling what the devs are doing overall to improve the game by only looking at things individually. Maybe they are going to balance damage output made by the monsters to being on par with damage ouput made by the players while improving their AI to reflect the tactics used by the players. If that were the case you would be glad they were making this change.

[Qzipoun]

space them out and you can get more than one wall of fire to tick at the same time...just tested this again and its still working as always. get a mob between both walls and hold em and you too can see this miracle of fire

No, you are misinterpreting what you're seeing. Have the mob stand absolutely still in multiple firewalls and you will only get one tick, no matter how you space them.

What you're actually seeing is a mob moving into and out of a firewall, causing one tick and sitting in another, causing the second tick. That's why if you make a column of firewalls and run a mob through, you'll get a tick per firewall. However, the 'passing through' damage is actually lower than the 'standing in' damage (if you examine the mob, you'll notice the description is sometimes different)

Edit: This could be very useful in some cases and isnt affected by the U8 change. Usually very annoying to your party though

[Junts]

If you're casting firewalls on top of one another to try and get one that crits, you're doing it wrong.

Learn to place firewalls adjacent to one another, where they'll ALL do damage to the mob. You're using the same amount of SP, getting more damage, and still have the chance to leverage crits.

With the change, it just makes it more important to learn proper placement of firewalls. Extremely useful... particularly when you're trying to layer firewalls alongside another caster without losing damage.

Casting all in one place works too; you just kite hte mobs back and forth over that spot and it will tick once for each wall it crosses.

You can get a lot more dps out of doing this than relying on the 2 second ticks for damage.

[Vellrad]

Remember in order to lessen hps and immunities on the monsters you must first lower the damage output of the party. There is no telling what the devs are doing overall to improve the game by only looking at things individually. Maybe they are going to balance damage output made by the monsters to being on par with damage ouput made by the players while improving their AI to reflect the tactics used by the players. If that were the case you would be glad they were making this change.

Yeah sure, and the best way to start is making race with incredibly high meele damage.

[Tirkan]

Because 2-3 more points of damage on a TWFer or 6-7 points on a THFer is -that- significant.

Chill.

[dredre9987]

No, you are misinterpreting what you're seeing. Have the mob stand absolutely still in multiple firewalls and you will only get one tick, no matter how you space them.

What you're actually seeing is a mob moving into and out of a firewall, causing one tick and sitting in another, causing the second tick. That's why if you make a column of firewalls and run a mob through, you'll get a tick per firewall. However, the 'passing through' damage is actually lower than the 'standing in' damage (if you examine the mob, you'll notice the description is sometimes different)

Edit: This could be very useful in some cases and isnt affected by the U8 change. Usually very annoying to your party though

Possibly but i can tell you from testing i can watch both tick if i space them far enough and get the mob held in between. And continue to watch numbers come up for both. Granted getting the mob held in the correct spot is sometimes difficult it doesn't seem impossible. It seems to be more of the right on the fringe of the wall of fire area that is hitting.

Now if your saying it's not supposed to do that I will put in a bug report but I have been trying this for about 2 hrs tonight and I can reproduce it reliably.

[oweieie]

It's a serious hit to firewalls. This was gone over before in the wizard forum. If the mob has resists, crit fishing does much better damage. If you can set up the firewalls beforehand crit fishing does much better damage. It doesn't matter if you're kiting or perching, that sidetrack is irrelevant. It should be obvious on reflection that something like the Eye of the Titan boss whose fire resistance means a wizard's non-crit firewall does 0 damage that crit fishing will be better than crit per tick. Setting up an initial crit firewall will significantly decrease kiting time and the number of meteor swarms to the head you take.

[Tirkan]

A better solution than crit fishing would be to, I dunno, use a different spell? Like, say, Ice Storm?

Or hopefully -new- spells that the Devs will come out with soon?

They are, after all, supposed to be doing a balance pass on spells Soon(tm)

[Trillea]

A better solution than crit fishing would be to, I dunno, use a different spell? Like, say, Ice Storm?

Or hopefully -new- spells that the Devs will come out with soon?

They are, after all, supposed to be doing a balance pass on spells Soon(tm)

So don't nerf what we got till they do dagnabbit!

[Tirkan]

...

okay, seriously now?

The change is going through in Update 8.

In the same update, they're introducing the new Ice Storm spell.

Look! Option!

From all reports, the thing is hitting for stupidly large amounts of -bludgeoning- damage - enough to at least match a Crit firewall on that alone! And then you add the Ice damage in!

[Trillea]

...

okay, seriously now?

The change is going through in Update 8.

In the same update, they're introducing the new Ice Storm spell.

Look! Option!

From all reports, the thing is hitting for stupidly large amounts of -bludgeoning- damage - enough to at least match a Crit firewall on that alone! And then you add the Ice damage in!

I have played with the Ice Storm spell as it is right now on Lam. There is NO WAY that it will hit live doing this amount of damage. And then we will be stuck with crit-per-tick junk with no alternate way of doing large amounts of sustainable damage in a short amount of time, even at the cost of more SP (crit-fishing).

Crit fishing is not cheating, it is NECESSARY in upper level content, especially epic (inflated HP) and elite Dreaming Dark (inflated resistances). Anyone that wants to prove me wrong I would LOVE to group with and see what I am doing wrong, I am always up for ways to improve my playstyle.

As it stands though, I am 100% against this and will continue to be.

[Angelus_dead]

You're still going to get -exactly the same- Damage over time out of it.

That's only true for players who never adjusted their actions upon noticing that a Wall of Fire has critted.

[Vellrad]

Because 2-3 more points of damage on a TWFer or 6-7 points on a THFer is -that- significant.

Chill.

Rigth now meeles are doing more DPS than casters. I'm not talking about sustainable DPS, I'm talking that in the same amount of time they can do more damage than caster shooting their most powerful and expensive spells.

Now add 1/2 orc's additional damage (which is BTW more that 6-7/attack) and after this nerf all casters can throw away all damaging spells.

[Tirkan]

...I dunno about you, but I can do about a thousand points of damage to every mob in the room in approx 4 seconds. Without really trying hard.

Granted, Melees can do -significant- damage to mobs that are in Auto-crit situations...but that's a special case. In general, a caster can do more damage to more enemies in less time than a melee can. They just can't sustain it.

[Vellrad]

...I dunno about you, but I can do about a thousand points of damage to every mob in the room in approx 4 seconds. Without really trying hard.

Granted, Melees can do -significant- damage to mobs that are in Auto-crit situations...but that's a special case. In general, a caster can do more damage to more enemies in less time than a melee can. They just can't sustain it.

OK, i don't know are these meeles lying or not, but if they, as they say are doing 500+ at critical hit (about 20% strikes) and about 90-100 at normal hit. Now without FW I got Meteor/polar ray/SlAs combo, dealing about the same damage as these meeles in this time. MAybe its because I'm wizard, not sorc, idk.

BTW, if mob is in autocrit situation, damage should be counted as on caster's side, IMO

[Cartheron]

Ok, I ve just done Eye of the titan elite. 24 minutes, no mana pots. It would be faster, but i forgot to buy lesser restore pots and had to kite boss to regain charisma from 0 to 1

I have a feeling that with one hand we were given Ice storm, and with other ability to crit fish was taken away, to awoid crit fishing for ice storm - do you know how high damage ice storm could produce if you could crit fish? Especially if you would be patient and fish for crit on both damage parts? I would take it the way as it is currently, rather than crit fishing to overcome resistances and such.

Currently, there are casters that solo amrath, solo epics and can do every quest in game solo (someone even soloed epic ADQ from what Ive heard). Some other casters are contantly whinning on forums how weak they are, that they are buff bots and wf healers, nothing more. I hope you get a picture.

Even if Ice storm will be nerfed (abit, not completly) it would still give casters another option. This is exactly what we need, more options, more spells. We should overcome resistances by avoiding them and using different element spells, not with crit fishing for spike damage.

I would like to add I agree that crit fishing was very useful when dealing with high resistances, but new system is better in high hp situations, because then problem is with sp efficiency, not time to be honest. In epics it is faster and more efficient to just cast fw twice than crit fish and not get crit one for 10 casts (it happens). You are standing on the ledge either way, its not like mobs can do anything to you.

Now, please let me show you some numbers with new Ice storm and boss dps.

Ice storm ticks 14 times. It deals about 170 bludgeon and about 150 cold. For the sake of calculations, lets assume it deals 300/tick, crits on 2 ticks for 2,75 dmg, so lets count it as 18 ticks. It is 5400dmg/30 sec, 16200 dmg during 90 secs. Why 90? Beacuse during 90 seconds, sorcerer can cast 30 polar rays (for about 2400-2500sp, which should almost drain him, depending on gear). 1 polar ray = 500dmg, about 1400 on crit. 6 of those rays are crits. So, total damage from polar rays during 90 seec is 20400 dmg. So, 1 sorc during 90 seconds will deal 36 600 damage to our raid boss target. It gives him 406dps against harry. 36 600 dmg is more than 10% of elite Harry hp. I think every raid leader would take 400 dps melee toon that can pass some buffs and take care of instakilling and other stuff. Casters presence in the end game is now more justified than ever. Casters had problem because most important bosses where immune to fire, which decreased casters ability to deal damage. Now, casters are given new tools. Adapt. Its a change in good direction. Let them change acid rain too and add some persistant lighting sepll. Casters will have choices. Casters wil lbe able to deal nice damage. Casters wont be forced to cast same spell 10 times to get a crit. Casters will be happy.

[Wrendd]

Casters will be happy.

Unfortunately, many people (caster included) seem to only be happy when they have something to complain about.