Water Savant - ToD Set Bonus NOT Working...

[vorpel]

I've been trying to determine gear sets for my Sorcs and wanted to validate if the changes to the ToD Elemental Savant sets were working and worth it.

Setup: Water Savant Sorc with Maximize/Empower turned off. Target had Cold Resist 30, Icy Potion of Frostbite and Fireshield (fire) to help reduce damage output.

Used Polar Ray to keep somewhat consistent results.

Cast Polar Ray 3 times without Water Savant set enabled (had Knost's Belt on). Combat log showed casting Polar Ray at level 26 and damage was: 119, 115, 123 (119 Avg).

Equiped Telvi's Sash and confirmed that both Water Savant I and Set Bonus showed active. Cast Polar Ray 3 times. All 3 showed as casting at level 26 in the combat log and damage was: 110, 126, 116 (117.3 Avg).



I was surprised that Polar Ray was showing as casting at level 26, not at level 28 which it should have been. To ensure that this wasn't a limitation with Polar Ray, I then cast each of the following and according to the combat log they all cast at level 26:

Ice Storm
Polar Ray
Cone of Cold
Otiluke's Freezing Sphere
Frost Lance
Inherent Frost Lance
Inherent Snowball Swarm
Inherent Niac's Cold Ray

Another test - 20 casts of Polar Ray against a target (Max/Emp off, target only had Cold Resist 30 on) without Water Savant Set on, then 20 casts with Water Savant Set on:

Without Water Savant Set average damage: 293.85
WITH Water Savant Set average damage: 297.52

From what I can tell, at least the Water Savant ToD Set Bonus is NOT properly stacking or we are being artificially limited to max caster level of 26 for the spells. I had a spell singer bard give me Song of Heightening and found that all the spells I tried above were now casting at level 27 both with and without the Water Savant ToD active.

I'm open to suggestions and corrections if I missed something in this limited testing.

Anyone else have any testing or info they care to share?

Thanks!

[Seventh]

You're off base here- the Savant sets do not provide a bonus to caster level. they provide a bonus to MAX caster level, which has no affect on Polar Ray since its max caster level is higher than standard (unless you have gear that increases caster level, then it could be put to use). The bonus to max caster level would, however improve the damage output of other spells, like Otilukes or Cone of Cold, since they're capped at 20/15 naturally.

[LeLoric]

I find it hard to believe that people are still misunderstanding the set bonuses.

Tod set bonuses give a +2 max caster level not +2 caster level. So for polar ray normally caps at 25d6. Each tier of savant pre gives another +1 mcl for 28d6 with a tier 3 savant. The set then gives two more for a total of 30d6.

Now the problem with polar ray is you only cast at 26 caster level (20 from caster level and 6 from savant.) So unless you have another item that gives a boost to caster level your polar rays will be 26d6 whether or not you have the set and why you saw no difference (not that 3 casts is enough to determine a difference in most cases.)

For a spell like otilukes which caps out at 20d6 normally you get 3d6 max caster level from savant and then an additional 2d6 from the set bonus for 25d6. So your otilukes are essentuially 125% that of what a non water savant could achieve. Since you cast at caster level 26 you will get the full damage for this spell and many others.

[vorpel]

Thanks for the clarification - it will help me with gear layout.

-Vorpel

[vorpel]

I find it hard to believe that people are still misunderstanding the set bonuses.

Tod set bonuses give a +2 max caster level not +2 caster level. So for polar ray normally caps at 25d6. Each tier of savant pre gives another +1 mcl for 28d6 with a tier 3 savant. The set then gives two more for a total of 30d6.

Now the problem with polar ray is you only cast at 26 caster level (20 from caster level and 6 from savant.) So unless you have another item that gives a boost to caster level your polar rays will be 26d6 whether or not you have the set and why you saw no difference (not that 3 casts is enough to determine a difference in most cases.)

For a spell like otilukes which caps out at 20d6 normally you get 3d6 max caster level from savant and then an additional 2d6 from the set bonus for 25d6. So your otilukes are essentuially 125% that of what a non water savant could achieve. Since you cast at caster level 26 you will get the full damage for this spell and many others.

The 3 casts in the attached image were meant to show the caster level in the combat log - not to be a definite difference of damage.

If you read my post I did do 20 casts of Polar Ray with and without the Savant set so that is where a bit more info is. Would have been happy to do more to compare but I got sick of idiots jumping in and attacking me. After the 5th person doing this I decided to just call it.

[Junts]

You cant' test with polar ray becuase you would need other +caster level gear to use it.

I can verify that the air savant set works. On Lamannia, my sla lightning bolt, ball lightning and chainlightning all deal 50-60 less damage due to the loss of the 2d6 from the improved level cap.

Its harder to notice with spells that scale slower like shocking grasp, electric loop or eladar's electric surge.

With Savant, your caster level cap is +28 with polar ray normally, and 30 with the savant set. You would need to have the abishai set to notice ad ifference, because to my knowledge the +caster level effects do not stack. At the very least, the arcane power staff (+2) and the bardsong (+1) do not stack. Its possible one of those will stack with abishai, which I don't have handy to test.

In any case, you need +2 caster level just to use your non-set bonus cap on polar ray, and it will be nearly impossible to verify the high-end of it without a ton of specialized gear.

Use otiluke's freezing sphere for your testing, since its cap will jump from 23d6 to 25d6 and be quite noticable. You should deal about 680-710 without the set bonus and 750-800ish with the set bonus. This is exactly the performance my sorceror gets from chainlightning with and without the set bonuses, and it has identical scaling.

This assumes a 75% clicky, sorc capstone, and full damage enhancements in cold with maximize and empower (IE normal damage, no eardweller factor or anything missing).

[vorpel]

Junts - thanks for the clarification and info.

Since I have both Kyrians band and Rahkirs ring (this sorc will be fire savant) I am going with swapping between fire savant and archmage sets (need Rahkirs Sash for archmagi when shrining).

I'll do some more testing as you suggested and I put a 3 piece set of abishai epic items on my caster last night so I'll play with that as well.

Have a good one.

[Junts]

Junts - thanks for the clarification and info.

Since I have both Kyrians band and Rahkirs ring (this sorc will be fire savant) I am going with swapping between fire savant and archmage sets (need Rahkirs Sash for archmagi when shrining).

I'll do some more testing as you suggested and I put a 3 piece set of abishai epic items on my caster last night so I'll play with that as well.

Have a good one.

It would be worth extensive testing to make sure its working with all spells, but spells that scale slower than 1d6 per caster level are extremely difficult to test. Stuff like Niac's/Eladar's that do 1d6+1 per level scale so slowly that you'd have to do some really intensive no-metamagic testing where you wrote down every number and suchlike to tell if they are getting +2 damage per casting or not.

One spell that scales in a particularly awesome way is Niac's Cold Ray: it deals 1d10 per level, max of 5, so savant adds 3d10 to it and the set adds another 2d10 - a 10d10 spell is extremely good! (its about equivalent of 18d6), but of course its 0 damage on any save. It makes pumping conjuuration extremely important for cold savants (its not an evocation spell) and its why i always recommend cold savants take conjuration instead of evocation focus despite otilukes and cone of cold being evocation spells (polar ray is too, but with no save its not relevant what it is). Being able to land the niac's cold ray sla is the difference, basically, between wehther cold has the best single-target SLAs (niacs+the iffy ice lance) or the worst (niacs+the iffy ice lance). Since tier 1 slas have very low cooldowns, despite the fact that sla lightning bolt is 15d6 with a 50% chance to hit twice (otherwise the best single-target SLA in any of the 4), the niacs will perform better if it always works because its cooldown is much lower than that of the bolt (you can use 2 instead of 1 every 8s).

[Arctigis]

... Stuff like Niac's/Eladar's that do 1d6+1 per level scale so slowly that you'd have to do some really intensive no-metamagic testing where you wrote down every number and suchlike to tell if they are getting +2 damage per casting or not.

I've done this for the PRE and posted the results a few times.

Niac's & Eladar's do not scale slowly. They do not scale at all. This is incredibly easy to observe, you will extremely
quickly see number ranges that should be impossible if scaling was working. e.g. My range for Niac's (also verified on
Eladar's) with BoP and 50% enhancements (for 1.5 * 1.2 mod) was 37 -> 46. If scaling was working, 37 should be
impossible.

For Nukes, Shocking grasp and Cone of Cold do not currently scale with the PRE increase to CL and MCL. Just
compare Ball Lightning to Cone of Cold - night and day. What's interesting is that shocking grasp was scaling in
early Lammania U9 builds...

One of Caveat is that I haven't empirically re-verified this information since 9.1 (though my observations tell
me it's still true) - it's quite labour intensive and not very rewarding...

It would be interesting to know if the ToD set was similarly limited on these spells (i.e. if the increase to MCL/CL
on these spells is broken or just from the PRE)

[altrocks]

The whole MCL and CL split is silly. It reeks of the same backward thinking that inspires sigils of leveling. Either you're casting a spell at X level or Y level. The spell damage either scales, stays the same or caps at a certain level of damage. That's how it SHOULD work. All these extra MCL/CL, changing CL caps and hard ceilings on spell damage are probably responsible for 90% of the new lag. The equations and functions used to determine these things are being called, run and reporting back multiple times a second for each caster in the game world who is actually doing something. It'd be like if half the player base was constantly casting a GH-Dispell Magic cycle on themselves while playing.

It's just complicated for complication's sake. There's no reason for it and it should be changed as soon as possible.

[budalic]

Niac's & Eladar's do not scale slowly. They do not scale at all. This is incredibly easy to observe, you will extremely
quickly see number ranges that should be impossible if scaling was working. e.g. My range for Niac's (also verified on
Eladar's) with BoP and 50% enhancements (for 1.5 * 1.2 mod) was 37 -> 46. If scaling was working, 37 should be
impossible.

Hmm... 21 (ie, roll of 1)* 1.8 (ie. 1.5 * 1.2) = 37.8; 26*1.8 = 46.8. If the game is rounding down, I see no problem there. Having leveled wizard alt recently, I can testify that Niacs and Eladars probably do scale.

[Arctigis]

Hmm... 21 (ie, roll of 1)* 1.8 (ie. 1.5 * 1.2) = 37.8; 26*1.8 = 46.8. If the game is rounding down, I see no problem there. Having leveled wizard alt recently, I can testify that Niacs and Eladars probably do scale.

I think you are confusing what we mean by scaling. In this context it means scaling beyond L20.

The game appears to use int types hence 37 - 48. The sorcerer savant PRE gives a boost to caster level and
maximum caster level (the bit that 'uncaps' spells). If we go by the spell description (dangerous I know) of
1d6 + 1per level then a TierIII Water Savant should be putting out 1D6 + 26.

e.g. the range would be

27 * (1.5) * (1.2) = 48 (rounded down)
32 * (1.5) * (1.2) = 57 (rounded down)

Which is clearly not the case. If we assume a cap at L20 then the PRE should boost this by
+3 (+5 with ToD set). Empirical data from just the PRE shows this is also no happening (as 37 would be
impossible).

[Mister_Peace]

Either you're casting a spell at X level or Y level. The spell damage either scales, stays the same or caps at a certain level of damage. That's how it SHOULD work. All these extra MCL/CL, changing CL caps and hard ceilings on spell damage are probably responsible for 90% of the new lag.

No, the use of barter box code in crafting machines is responsible for 90% of the new lag.

[budalic]

I think you are confusing what we mean by scaling. In this context it means scaling beyond L20.

Yes, you are right. I was thinking about caster level scaling to lvl 20...

Looks like it's bugged, but that's not unexpected, I guess - I recall being quite surprised they rolled out U9 when lamma forums were still full of bug reports...

[HallowedOne]

Christ, someone must clean those waters, eh?