Fire > Ice

[fuzzy1guy]

I think there needs to be some sort of balancing across the elemental aoe dots and single target dots overall damage vs time and sp.

Right now fully specced for ice.. ice storm is ALMOST as good as a completely unspecced firewall from the same toon.

The only thing that pulls ice ahead from fully unspecced firewall is the elemental weakness thing. Which takes quite some time to stack up where its useful.

It's pretty stupid i get a better return as an ice savant by spamming firewall.

Same goes for burning blood. It's a MUCH better single target dot than either the cold or electric. Just on the cooldown timer alone. I can spam burning blood twice as fast as either the cold or electric. And get better damage out of it as well.


You can spec for cold or electric. But you'll STILL be getting a better return out of your acid spells and fire spells than you will from your uber specced cold or electric stuff. its... messed up.

[Farayon]

Would you mind posting your numbers please? I still haven't made up my mind about which route my sorc will take so any tested numbers will be highly appreciated.

[Alcamez]

Wheww I thought this was a Rober Frost Thread. Sorry to interupt.

[fuzzy1guy]

this is comming just from a solo epic test fully ice specced. I wasn't seeing such great numbers from ice storm. Along with the inital delay in damage ticks... And switched over to firewall for that key.


On average i'd say i'm seeing 150's for ice storm. adding up both the cold and bludgon damage.

And firewall is putting out 100's. with having zero enhancements behind it. drink an inferno pot and it would prolly beat my ice sav baseline for ice storm.


Biting cold is also putting out in the 150's range... Where burning blood often does 200 (100+100). Again with nothing behind it.

Can't think of any singular epic mob i could go test on easily and be able to write down stuff. And non epic mobs just don't live long enough for any sort of testing.


So far it's really looking like fire/acid savant is the way to go... Unless you want the special abilities of ice.. prison. or air.. leap.. and you'll still end up using alot of fire/acid spells anyway because they're better for various small reasons.

[rokes]

Just because FW>Ice storm doesn't means that Fire>Ice.
There are plenty of other spells to take in consideration. Polar ray is still 5 times better than DBF.
I think all the savants types are pretty much balanced, except maybe earth hehe

[fuzzy1guy]

Irrevelant. I'm talking about the dot's and aoe dots. EVERYONE will be using polar ray no matter what anyway. 15sp base.. yeah we're not gonna pass that up.

But this is about the dots.

3 second cooldown. 12 second 38sp burning blood: fire 2-8+1 per level. + acid 2-8+1 per level max : 56
10 second cooldown. 16 second 50sp biting cold : 1-6+1 per level. max: 26 (plus 6 for cl max 32)
10 second cooldown. 16 second 50sp electric surge: 1-6+1 per level max:26

As an ice sav fully specced in ice. in 60 seconds i can cast

20 burning blood, sp spent: 760. Max damage tic base: 1120 x 12 seconds.
6 biting cold, sp spent: 300 Max damage tic base: 192 x 16 seconds.
6 electric surge, sp spen: 300 Max damage tic base: 156 x 16 seconds.


Wow.... i knew it was off... but damm. gets to be really obvious no matter which way i look at it.
I can change how i look at it vs time/sp/damage/cooldown... but burning blood always wins.

[Thorzian]

how bad IS the electric? the leap is very appealing to me and that way my fire AND ice spells will still hold the same jam they do now no?

if lightning is no good then i will definately go the fire route.

[fuzzy1guy]

Well the electric dot as you see... Does not stack up anywhere close to the fire/acid dot burning blood. altho there is nothing stopping you from using all 3 no matter which sav line u pick. but the fire/acid bonus would get you more just on that spell than the spec in electric would.


shocking grasp is a real nice spell. Always hits. solid/cheap damage. gotta be in touch range tho.
electric loop is ok damage and a chance to stun.
lightning bolt is pretty crappy.. the casting animation speed has been messed up forever between wizard and sorc. they're backwards.
ball lightning is a fairly nice aoe. comparable to fireball.
chain lightning is pretty crappy as well. it does work. it does good damage. its leap ability is questionable tho and highly unreliable.

The savant leap is ok too. but it's really not a leap. its a crackhead sprint from A to B. and it keeps no momentum from the leap after the distance has been traveled. nice escape tool. but really not as useful as i had imagined.


I really want to do air sav for personal flavor choice mostly. But i don't think it stacks up well enough to do it. Acid would serve better in most normal content and epics. Ice would serve better in endgame type raids on pitfiends ect... And fire covers all the game and epics. everything as it does now except amrath. Air? well... they'd be casting alot of the other savant spells... so why not take one of those instead. They don't get enough special toys or major damage increases on spells like the other 3.

[shagath]

And fire covers all the game and epics. everything as it does now except amrath. Air? well... they'd be casting alot of the other savant spells... so why not take one of those instead.

Fire savant will be casting a lot of other elements too in amrath and in many raids, where polar is usually best pick for single target instant damage and they get lower caster level. Earth seems best with some water spec or untyped/force but I'm still leaning to finish my next life with air for wind dance(I also like chain lightning a lot).

[fuzzy1guy]

Yup. see above comment about polar ray.. 15sp.
Unspecced with a glaciation item or clicky.. Will do just fine for anything fire won't work on.

And untyped damage is viable to spec into as well. Hit everything.


Fire sav really isnt in question.. It will be as uber as it always has been. Just even better.

acid/untyped
acid/fire
acid/ice
fire/untyped
fire/acid
ice/untyped
ice/acid

Gonna see alot of those around i think. electric just don't stack up well enough overall. and acid/fire gets you THE most out of the best dot. and the best aoe dots.

[Zack77]

I'm still thinking Earth-Savant is the way to go. Tried out Water Savant first to see how it does, and was still doing more damage with Acid Rain (average of 250 per tick) and Burning Blood (can't remember numbers off the top of my head) compared to Niac's Biting Cold (Low damage, even as a water savant) and Ice Storm (Cold portion averaged ~70, Bludgeon ~100). Melf's does great single-target damage as well (Can't remember 100%, but I believe the damage range was either ~120-150, or ~220-250), not as good as polar ray, but with Earth Savant, it'll probably do similar damage numbers.

[CrimsonReLLiK]

In a test in VoD, Using an Air Savant, I had a 5x Elec Debuff and 3x Electric Surge DoT running on Suulomades, and as long as I kept it going, it was 681 dmg every 2 seconds. I don't know how the other Debuff/DoTs do in comparison, but it really chewed his hp down very quickly. Earth savant (the only other I tested) was basically useless versus him, due to immunities and mantle.

[Cartheron]

Change title of thread to Fire>Ice for aoe and it will be true. Fire has much better aoe spells than ice, this is true. But ice has best single target dps currently achievable in game.

You cant compare fire to ice looking only at aoe aspect. Aoe is used for trash, every arcane should be able to destroy trash in seconds. Biggest drawback of fire is that most things we really want to damage is fire immune.

I would guess that most sorcs will be fire savants up to lev 18 or so, then respec to ice/earth/air for end game.

[Darkrok]

I would guess that most sorcs will be fire savants up to lev 18 or so, then respec to ice/earth/air for end game.

This. Fire until you're out of the content where it works well. Up until then fire makes things go SO quickly - and that's without the bonuses from savant.

[Jaid314]

This. Fire until you're out of the content where it works well. Up until then fire makes things go SO quickly - and that's without the bonuses from savant.

forget that. *acid* until i feel the need to switch. have you *looked* at what acid rain does? i'm not even certain wall of fire is even the best choice for anything except maybe fire-vulnerable undead anymore...

[fuzzy1guy]

firewall still real damm nice on duration, damage, and aoe size/usefulness.
I can't see ever giving it up. even for a cold sav.


But acid rain and burning blood are king now. acid specced or not.

I think long term most casters will end up with all 3. No matter what their spec.

[Infant]

Hi fuzzy1guy,

Do I understand correctly from your calculations that several Burning Bloods from the same caster stack?

Thx,
Infant

[Cartheron]

No, several burning bloods from different caster stacks, but not from the same caster. Melf acid arrow from spell stack with one from SLa, but only for first tick, ie. when you cast SLA and follow it by casting a spell, you will get additional tick of damage.

[abrownbear9108]

just curious, has ANYONE tested whether the fire sav debuff, fully stacked, affects the Heat Death ability at all? so that instead of doing a flat 2000 fire in an instant, it does 3500? does it work? has anyone tested? do enhancements also affect it? so that it does a further 50% fire damage from fully fire spec?

will it be 3000 (2000 +50% from fire enhancements) 1500 (75% of base) for a total of 4500? or will it be 5250? (3000 +2250 from fire debuff)

and then will it be able to crit? if its only 2000 and can crit, that'll bring it to 4500. If its 4500 will it crit for 10125? or will it crit for 11813(rounded up) for the 5250 damage one.

and then, on top of everything, will the Eardweller stack and affect it also? for 6000, 9000 or 10500 non crits. Crits reaching 9000, 20250 and 23626 respectively.......

this is all collosal numbers, and i've seen screenshots of 19000 damage polar rays PRE Update 9

oh and none of these numbers included an ice mobs weakness to fire%, gods only know how high a crit could get for that

this would be an interesting test for pure fire savants to do, dont know where you'd do it though

have fun thinking about this guys i know i did

EDIT: also, feel free to correct me if i got my numbers wrong

[fugazi70]

I tried fire savant for a few but it never worked on epic mobs. Their saves were so high it didn't go off. I had a 39 DC and they resisted. Most mobs turned out to be immune if it ain't alive forget it so there goes undead!

If I had a chance I could go test it when my timer resets but most mobs that arent epic dont have more than 2k worth of hp heh

just curious, has ANYONE tested whether the fire sav debuff, fully stacked, affects the Heat Death ability at all? so that instead of doing a flat 2000 fire in an instant, it does 3500? does it work? has anyone tested? do enhancements also affect it? so that it does a further 50% fire damage from fully fire spec?