Black Dragon Bolt

[Zzevel]

My Earth Savant just became an extremely happy lill guy.


Horrid Wilting, yer gittin the boot!

Preach on Brotha!

[taurean430]

Nice

The settles the process of deciding what savant my first ever sorcerer will be. Now if only I can find a decent build guide...

[Dark-Star]

That spell is awesome enough to take even if you're an air savant IMHO. Moar dots on every time.
More dots...
More dots...
More dots...
More dots...
STOP DOTS!

Nah I'm just kidding don't stop dots.

I'm not sure that's the case. You will be casting it at caster level 11.

[Stillwaters]

Even if this spell did the SAME damage as polar ray wouldn't it pull ahead on averages since each tick gets a shot to crit?

3 ticks = 3 chances to crit vs polar rays 1 chance?

UPDATE: its ealry and i havent had my morning coffee so if my math is suspect thats prolly the reason

[Rodasch]

Even if this spell did the SAME damage as polar ray wouldn't it pull ahead on averages since each tick gets a shot to crit?

3 ticks = 3 chances to crit vs polar rays 1 chance?

UPDATE: its ealry and i havent had my morning coffee so if my math is suspect thats prolly the reason

No, they average out the same over time since each crit is for a smaller amount per crit where when polar ray crits it's all crit.

[Morosy]

By the way what is the cooldown on this spell?

[rest]

I'm not sure that's the case. You will be casting it at caster level 11.

It's still a DoT. Still more damage. What level spell is it? 8? I'm sure I could drop mass charm for it, since that's not as useful as it used to be in epics. I'll probably slot it in and see how it does before making a concrete decision.

[Dark-Star]

4 seconds.

[Asmodeus451]

what i'm reading here is alot of really mad Water Savants that just realized they are no longer King of the Castle.

just remeber this guys- up til now, we Earth Savants have had exactly ONE Acid spell that breaks through Mantle of Invulnerability: Acid Fog.

if we wanted to do boss DPS, we had to use non-acid spells.

now we have a high level damge optionthat allows us to compete.

we can cast BDB, while you water Savs out there can cast Otilukes, Niacs, and Polar Ray, and STILL out DPS us.

so please, stop complaining

[Darknark]

what i'm reading here is alot of really mad Water Savants that just realized they are no longer King of the Castle.

I think water savants just got better for "dot nuking".... If you wanna drop all your dots and just go for a speed kill, then water is still the way to go.

Water Sav:
Niacs w/ boosted CL
Eladars w/ normal cl
Bdb w/ normal cl

Air sav:
Niacs w/ norm cl
Eladars w/ boosted cl
Bdb w/ -9 cl

Earth sav:
Niacs w/ norm cl
Eladars w/ -9 cl
Bdb w/ boosted cl.

The only one here that doesn't take a negative to one of its dots is the water sav.

[Asmodeus451]

I think water savants just got better for "dot nuking".... If you wanna drop all your dots and just go for a speed kill, then water is still the way to go. Plus you get your boost in Evon.

Water Sav:
Niacs w/ boosted CL
Eladars w/ normal cl
Bdb w/ normal cl

Air sav:
Niacs w/ norm cl
Eladars w/ boosted cl
Bdb w/ -9 cl

Earth sav:
Niacs w/ norm cl
Eladars w/ -9 cl
Bdb w/ boosted cl.

The only one here that doesn't take a negative to one of its dots is the water sav.

you make an excellent point there.

water Sav is still going to be quite powerful. i'm just glad Earth is getting some love and wish ppl would stop complaining about it

[Darknark]

you make an excellent point there.

water Sav is still going to be quite powerful. i'm just glad Earth is getting some love and wish ppl would stop complaining about it

Earth and fire are still good for leveling up, and both do good in epics *earth is far more useful than fire*... but seriously... if anything needs 'love' it is fire. The game is 'devil heavy' and fire is useless against devils.

[Asmodeus451]

Earth and fire are still good for leveling up, and both do good in epics *earth is far more useful than fire*... but seriously... if anything needs 'love' it is fire. The game is 'devil heavy' and fire is useless against devils.

absolutely agree. i just dont see any way to fix it without removing fire immune from devils.

[dingal]

So an 8th level acid spell that does 100-300 damage over it's 6 seconds span per cast (at caster level 25) plus metas and enhancements etc.

Rate vs Polar ray:

8th level cold spell that does 50-150 damage (all at once) per cast (at caster level 25) plust metas and enhancements.

Instant:
Polar Ray: 50-150 (avg 100)
Black Dragon Bolt: 25-75 (avg 50)

at 2 seconds:
Polar Ray: 0
Black Dragon Bolt: 50-150 (avg 100)

at 4 seconds:
Polar Ray: 0
Black Dragon Bolt: 75-225 (avg 150)

at 6 seconds:
Polar Ray: 0
Black Dragon Bolt: 100-300 (avg 200)

So it looks like it will do double polar ray's damage per sp, and double the dps of polar ray, since the cooldown on polar ray is 6 seconds.

Is this spell intended to be the absolute best single target damage spell in the game?

It rivals triple stacked niacs/eladars for pure dps without the restriction of having to stack it up to that.

base 33.3-50 dps on BDB vs 31.5-39 base dps on Niacs/eladars 3 stack

While those numbers may not look huge yet, that's BASE dps. Metas/enhancements magnify it a great deal.

full elemental spec enhancements, full metas, sorc capstone multiply all those numbers by approximately 5 times

--edit: removed erroneous calcs from flawed spreadsheet. see calcs posted later on page 2 of this thread for BDB dps calcs--


That looks way too overpowered.

It gets even sicker when you factor in savant curses.

It gets less sick when you figure in acid immunity and much of what is still considered "end game". We'll see what U11 raids bring to the table but so far given acids limited use today I'm not overly concerned about it.

[Veriden]

So they nerf melees like crazy and buff casters to an obscene level? When will melees get some love? At this rate I'd be happy to call it even if you give us our attack speeds back fully to what they were pre-update 5 so we can at least compare to casters. I've never had any desire to play an arcane caster, not my play style personally. Divines are fine where they are now but arcanes are getting a little redicious.

[Hollowgolem]

what i'm reading here is alot of really mad Water Savants that just realized they are no longer King of the Castle.

just remeber this guys- up til now, we Earth Savants have had exactly ONE Acid spell that breaks through Mantle of Invulnerability: Acid Fog.

if we wanted to do boss DPS, we had to use non-acid spells.

now we have a high level damge optionthat allows us to compete.

we can cast BDB, while you water Savs out there can cast Otilukes, Niacs, and Polar Ray, and STILL out DPS us.

so please, stop complaining

I think this is the most important point made in this thread.

This is now the -second- high-level acid spell for earth-savvies.

Remember that, as it now stands, the only savant end-game that -really- competes with water is air, and their BDB will be horrible. This allows earth to put a potent spell of their own element into their spell rotation.

Because these spells aren't just important to consider on their own, but in the context of the wider meta game, where this is clearly a balancing factor to earth savvies being the red-headed stepchild of savants. Fire gets the most items to boost its damage and, arguably, some of the best bonuses/SLAs to compensate for the immunities endgame, and the other two were popular because they're good. Now earth savants can shine in quests that aren't Sleeping Dust.

[Musouka]

you make an excellent point there.

water Sav is still going to be quite powerful. i'm just glad Earth is getting some love and wish ppl would stop complaining about it

I never complained about my earth savant, because I made it work great with the tools given. And lots of time spent levelling crafting.

It gets less sick when you figure in acid immunity and much of what is still considered "end game". We'll see what U11 raids bring to the table but so far given acids limited use today I'm not overly concerned about it.

Explain what is immune to acid? I mean completely immune. I already know of a few things, but I want to know what is truly immune to acid that make acid limited use.

[Asmodeus451]

I never complained about my earth savant, because I made it work great with the tools given. And lots of time spent levelling crafting.

i was reffering to ll theppl complaining about BDB

[Musouka]

i was reffering to ll theppl complaining about BDB

Ah... cool.

[sirgog]

20%-60% is huge, that means for every 1000 points of damage you do with polar ray, you'd be doing 1200-1600 with Black Dragon Bolt for the same SP and over the same time frame. The only way to make this spell equal to Polar Ray, or worse than Polar ray, is to fight something with Acid Resistance of more than it's cold resistance. Or if the Acid resist value actually hits about 60-65, so as to invalidate the separate ticks.

Epic Lailat has Cold resist 80 but no Acid Resist, this spell is the clear choice on her
Elite Horoth has equal resistance to cold and acid, making this spell the clear choice again
Elite Sully has equal resistance to cold and acid, making this spell the clear choice again
Sorjek - Immune to cold, this spell wins hands down
Arraetrikos - equal resistance to cold and acid...again, this spell wins
Abbot - immune to cold and electric but not acid...again this spell wins
Epic Velah - the one and only worthwhile raid boss where this spell falls behind polar ray, due purely to velah's vulnerability to cold spells.

See where this is going?

Velah isn't vulnerable to cold on Epic.

This spell is definitely slightly superior to Polar Ray, which is Cold's second best spell for single-target damage output.

It's still no Niacs or Eladars, and doesn't justify taking Earth Savant at endgame. Looks like a very worthwhile spell to use on a Water Savant at certain times, however.