Should Sorcs and Alcs AoE 1 shot groups of mobs while leveling?

[redoubt]

When I filter for cap 30s only I found the alcs are concentrated at cap. Here is one from a few nights ago, alcs and palis (which are also getting nerfed) outnumber everyone else:





That being said, this was never a nerf X thread. More of try to understand opinions thread. One opinion given though that was more difficult to understand was the "only cap matters" given at the same time as "alchemist are underplayed don't nerf them" using the overall population which is dominated by leveling characters. That particular opinion both implied to nerf and not nerf alchemists at the same time. Heh.

You should check your analysis again. The only outlier is paladin. Every other class is between 1&4.

10 paladins
4 fighters
4 alchemists
3 wizards
3 barbarians
2 monks
2 artificers
2 favored souls
2 rangers
2 rogues
1 sorc
1 warlock
1 bard
1 druid

[Vordax]

When I filter for cap 30s only I found the alcs are concentrated at cap. Here is one from a few nights ago, alcs and palis (which are also getting nerfed) outnumber everyone else:

Use real world stats instead of anecdotal:


Looks like Alcs are tied for second lowest at end game.

[Tilomere]

Use real world stats instead of anecdotal:


Looks like Alcs are tied for second lowest at end game.

Ahh, didn't know that was available until now. It wasn't available when people were giving their opinions initially and I started this post so it was confusing, as several times when I looked and played within cap populations recently I saw more alchemists and paladins.



It makes me wonder what current populations are, now that time has passed for shifter iconic past lives since that is a 3 month average. Using that as the metric for balancing end game is crystal clear. Nerf warlocks. Hah! Anyone can understand that as a point of view. They should just lead with that next time.

PS: That's a joke. End game is a varied opinion of activities, which are measured in varied ways based on the opinion of the person defining them. It is a totally real and valid opinion to hold that only the activities you deem important measured in ways you deem proper matter. It's not as straight forward as simply "Nerf warlocks!" Except, of course, to those who hold the totally real and valid opinion to do so.

[gudal84]

Caster vs. melee vs. ranged DPS is a relevant question but you are cherry picking your numbers, so this won't lead anywhere.

First, damage != DPS, melee/ranged have higher attack speed + double shot, and I don't think that 200 number is on held mobs.

Second, calling at cap performance irrelevant is absurd. Plenty of people play at cap permanently, and many people doing PLs play at cap between their lives, or aim to play at cap after their lives. If play at cap was an unbalanced mess, many wouldn't even bother with PLs to begin with.

He is indeed cherrypicking numbers to the degree that anyone who has finished introductory math should have all warning bells ringing from the word "hello!". Sadly, it seems the devs actually listened to this dude. They might have said at some point that swash is supposed to be what they are to balance things around, but then they need to balance mobs around that too, and they clearly dont do that. Swash was considerably better when comparing ONLY to mobs before, so they are clearly balancing the mobs to something else than swash.

The nerfs to alch (sorc) now make them literally impossible to play in heroic, at least solo and thats all that makes this game worth playing in heroics to me (hate zerg, all groups are zerg). I hope this dude either leaves the game forever or at least never makes his voice heard again, cause the devs clearly arent capable of siphoning away the loudmouthes who dont represent the rest. If you consider SP usage as part of power, alchs where reduced by 75 percent. If u dont consider sp usage, then only 51 percent. Thats obviously (from before seeing it in action) too much in one go, and what we see now only confirms that.

EDIT: I agree with the rest of your post too, though SOME considerations should be done to balance in heroic too, though not as much. At least stuff useful at endgame shouldnt be totally unplayable while leveling, cause it will lead to us having fewer of those in endgame,, and potentially people quitting.

[gudal84]

So the majority of players are leveling in DDO, and cap play and gear are largely irrelevant:



Now the standard of balance is supposed to be swashbuckler, which at level 15 while leveling non-crits single target for <100, and crits for 500:



THF is twice as powerful as swashbuckler, hitting non-crit multple targets in melee for <200:



An inquisitor is also roughly twice as powerful as a swashbuckler, hitting about twice as fast for the same damage:


Sorcs and Alcs however are off the charts, hitting ranged AoE non-crit for 30x as much as a swashbuckler with weaker spells, or 60x as much with stronger spells (meteor or multivial). This allows sorcs and Alcs to ranged AoE 1 shot groups of mobs, even unbuffed without consumables or ship buffs, like this:



That is Delayed Blast Fireball, hitting for 1d6+7 (10.5) per caster level. An Alchemist multivial hits for 4d6+8 (22) per caster level, and hits more than twice as hard, hitting for >6k AoE non-crit at level 15 on a well built caster. Meteor on a sorc is the same. It doesn't really matter which one you play, both AoE 1 shot groups of mobs while leveling. Sorcs and alcs have about the same crit chance as THF or swashbuckling, but they get 3-6k more damage on a spell at level 15, compared to ~400 more damage on a hit while swashbuckling.

So my question is simple. Is it out of line for a sorc or alc to hit for 3-6k ranged non-crit AoE at level 15 and AoE 1 shot groups of mobs when a melee or ranged of the same level hits for <200 to a few mobs, and swashbuckling which is the standard of balance hits a single mob for <100 non-crit in melee?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note: I didn't call out warlocks, because the math shows they don't hit for as many multipliers of swashbuckling as sorcs/alcs. The math shows a warlock at level 15 merely AoEs with Cone for twice the non-crit damage a swashbuckler hits a single target for, and Eldritch Waves AoE for merely 10x the single target damage of a swashbuckler.

Level 15 SE/TS warlock has 4d6 Blast and 7d4 Pact damage base, plus 4d4 pact from TS enhancements, minus 1d4 pact die from cone shape.
Net 4d6 blast and 10d4 pact.

We will use 421 Fire, 234 Force spell power from unbuffed sorc above for calculations.130% spell power scaling yields:

Eldritch cone hits for (4d6)(1+2.34*1.3) + 10d4*(1+4.21*1.3) = 56 + 162 = 218 non-crit

Eldritch wave metamagic maximize/empower hits for 3x [(4d6)(1+(2.34+2.25)*1.3) + 10d4*(1+(4.21+2.25)*1.3)]
=3x [98 + 235] = 999

Agree multivial was a bit on the cheap side before, but... When using level 9 spell equivalents that costs a LOT of sp yes u need to be able to oneshot many people at once to make the spell even remotely worth casting. And no, its is not an option leaving them on 10% hp to let the melee finish them off, cause many of us dont group in heroics cause we dont want too (too much zerg/too many people thinking only in terms of xp/min, too little "ok ill show u how this quest works", etc). The SP cost is too significant,, and i think if we are to balance things in heroics we cant balance around those who have all SP past lives, uptodate wizardry gear, etc. We need to balance elite/r1 around a 3rd-10th life solo, or else we are gonna push away newer players before they get invested into the game.

Edit: And the damage numbers u are referring to here is WAAAY over anything i have ever been able to hit in actual questing at that level, and thats with comparable stats to yours (in the picture). And the damage stats u post for melees more aligned to what i can hit in quests with those builds. Do u compare inquest numbers for melees with test dummy numbers for casters here? Not to mention that the spell has a cost, the swash swing does not (assuming we dont count necessary heals that comes from being melee)

[MasterKernel]

Should Sorcs and Alcs AoE 1 shot groups of mobs while leveling ?

Sure thing, they should ! They are Sorcerers and Alchemists !
It's still a D&D-based game. Some classes should do medium damage but can control monsters, some should do no damage like at all but can disarm traps and some classes should use AOE to one-shot groups of 1000+ enemies !

There is no and can't be any "balance" neither in the PnP nor in CRPG. Every "balance" talks are just rubbish and should never have started.

PS. Even a pure PvP games don't have a complete balance, what have you expect from a role-driven PvE game ?!

[OnceAgainBros]

Agree multivial was a bit on the cheap side before, but... When using level 9 spell equivalents that costs a LOT of sp yes u need to be able to oneshot many people at once to make the spell even remotely worth casting. And no, its is not an option leaving them on 10% hp to let the melee finish them off, cause many of us dont group in heroics cause we dont want too (too much zerg/too many people thinking only in terms of xp/min, too little "ok ill show u how this quest works", etc). The SP cost is too significant,, and i think if we are to balance things in heroics we cant balance around those who have all SP past lives, uptodate wizardry gear, etc. We need to balance elite/r1 around a 3rd-10th life solo, or else we are gonna push away newer players before they get invested into the game.

Edit: And the damage numbers u are referring to here is WAAAY over anything i have ever been able to hit in actual questing at that level, and thats with comparable stats to yours (in the picture). And the damage stats u post for melees more aligned to what i can hit in quests with those builds. Do u compare inquest numbers for melees with test dummy numbers for casters here? Not to mention that the spell has a cost, the swash swing does not (assuming we dont count necessary heals that comes from being melee)

I don't know if you're familiar with the OP in the thread, but he's been the laughingstock of every DDO social scene I've been in since I really got into making my own builds. He performs suspect math on his numbers, he recommends going out of your way to make your build more difficult, and then he cherrypicks his screenshots in an attempt to make his builds look good. Back in the day, when Holy Sword could be put on a repeater and traded to a party member, he incorrectly treated the 3 individual bolts as tripling the crit multiplier instead of just tripling the average damage. Anyone with even a basic grasp of math can see the errors here. Since then he's espoused taking Tier 5 in Tempest (a TWF tree) as a THF character, he's claimed that leveling 20 to 30 doing legendary R4-6 is faster reaper XP than just zerging to cap and joining R10 dailies, and just in general his advice and his outlook on the game is best taken with a grain of salt and a belly-laugh that somebody actually thinks that way.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

Should Sorcs and Alcs AoE 1 shot groups of mobs while leveling ?

Sure thing, they should ! They are Sorcerers and Alchemists !
It's still a D&D-based game. Some classes should do medium damage but can control monsters, some should do no damage like at all but can disarm traps and some classes should use AOE to one-shot groups of 1000+ enemies !

There is no and can't be any "balance" neither in the PnP nor in CRPG. Every "balance" talks are just rubbish and should never have started.

PS. Even a pure PvP games don't have a complete balance, what have you expect from a role-driven PvE game ?!

The problem is, that people tend to play ONLY unbelanced power classes !

Who needs a Rogue when he can 1-shot everything in a speedrun ?

Who needs a Rogue if one can show how good he is by making everyone feel unneeded ?
Making others feel less powerful is in my opinion part of the current system of proving to be manly. The more powerful someone is, the more manly he is considered - even on the expense of others 8which is often an desired outcome ! To make other players feel inferior !).

Anyone with even a basic grasp of math can see the errors here.

I can't, with my Dyscalculia.

[kanordog]

The problem is, that people tend to play ONLY unbelanced power classes !

Who needs a Rogue when he can 1-shot everything in a speedrun ?

Who needs a Rogue if one can show how good he is by making everyone feel unneeded ?
Making others feel less powerful is in my opinion part of the current system of proving to be manly. The more powerful someone is, the more manly he is considered - even on the expense of others 8which is often an desired outcome ! To make other players feel inferior !).

I can't, with my Dyscalculia.

The game is designed around achievements/power so the quicker the better. If you have only one hour a day to keep your character raid ready and to be able to contribute in a raid on the most run difficulty you got to gain power quick.

There is nothing manly about playing a video game so do not worry, not being able to one-shot everything in a video game does not make you not manly. Most of the one shotting gamers are really not that powerful in real life.
"I can instakill a raid boss with my great axe on my half-orc." Is possibly one of the worst pick-up lines ever.

[merlinfire1]

I have still yet to hear a compelling explanation of why it is that squishy kill-fast-or-die no-armor-wearing classes had to be toned down to make their DPS in-line with heavy and medium armor users with better defenses and self-heals. I got done playing through my first alchemist life before the patch went live, i felt it was strong, but not mind-blowingly overpowered. certainly not to the point that it needed to have its top end nerfed by ~50%. personally i found alchemist kind of a boring archetype, some kind of sorc/wiz hybrid that had narrower spell options. now that it got nerfed into the basement i wouldn't even bother, it will be dead last on my list of PL's to finish up

i enjoy running wizard lives though, and it's disappointing to hear the key wizard/sorc spell got nerfed heavily.

[LightBear]

So the majority of players are leveling in DDO, and cap play and gear are largely irrelevant:

Not so happy with the interpolation of the lines in these graphs. The content being played is near the same as the number of quests at that level.
So its not a lack of interest of the quests at those levels but a lack of (new) content at those levels.

[ggmarquez]

Not so happy with the interpolation of the lines in these graphs. The content being played is near the same as the number of quests at that level.
So its not a lack of interest of the quests at those levels but a lack of (new) content at those levels.

that's a good theory. but, if i understand correctly, the point being made was simply that less than 20% of all players are at cap. at any given time. adding together all the players who are still "leveling" you end up with a clear picture. 80% or more, of all players, across every server, are somewhere in the TR wheel. therefore, any "balance" concentrated at level 30+ content misses the vast majority of those actually playing the game.

if elemental spell damage one-shots everything during levels 1-29, and then abruptly stops being as useful, it affects over 80% of all players in a negative way. if the reverse were true, and sorcs and alchemists were super OP at 30, it would have less of an overall impact.

[ggmarquez]

I have still yet to hear a compelling explanation of why it is that squishy kill-fast-or-die no-armor-wearing classes had to be toned down to make their DPS in-line with heavy and medium armor users with better defenses and self-heals. I got done playing through my first alchemist life before the patch went live, i felt it was strong, but not mind-blowingly overpowered.

i killed the crab in WPM on r10 using an alchemist build. i was running solo and kept getting my face pushed in by that crab. seriously strong crab, seriously squishy alchemist. after wiping at the crab, maybe 6 or 7 times, i decided i would just "practice" upping skulls until i found my limit. i started on r3. easy. r5, he hurt but it was doable. r7 i died, kept dying. but... i noticed something. if i wasn't facing the crab, i could still throw out my spell rotation. it clicked, and i got the r7 completion. then i tried r10. sure enough, all i had to do was run in a circle, about 5 character lengths from the outer wall, with the crab hard targeted. i never stopped running, never even looked at it, just ran in a circle constantly firing. sometimes, when a pincer flashed into view near the side of the screen, i would hit memory of flight or fly-by attack. it took a long time, but he went down without ever hitting me.

after that, i started using the same tactic in every quest. run past the things, target one, blow them all to khyber without slowing down or turning to watch. keep your eyes on the prize whilst everything dies. alchemist. tsk.

[Bjond]

all of them 1 shot groups of mobs with them

I'm going to dodge the whole "should/balance" issue and come at this from a different angle: PnP D&D. In actual D&D, your spell casters are 100% useless almost all the time. They're towed about, protected, and tolerated so they can unleash all hell on things very quickly for a very few critical fights.
Casters wiping out entire groups with a single cast is basically de rigueur for D&D. What's not normal for D&D is that they can do this over and over for an entire dungeon.

Most of PnP is filled with RP, which every player engages in regardless of the character's actions on the table. That degree of RP never happens in an MMO. There has to be something for every class to do in every fight. DDO recognizes that the D&D/PnP norm for casters is simply not fun in an MMO and thus created SP to permit casters to be part of the mix.

What we have here is not a balance issue. It's a paradigm war between MMO and D&D. Balance is collateral damage.

[Tilomere]

Huge shoutout to Clemit for developing an API to pull data from so we can now talk about hardcore casters.

Hardcore Data, with a certain casters not dying off as fast, but showing no particular other class post-nerf is squishy.

[Mofus]

Yes, yes they should,

[Hanul]

Should Sorcs and Alcs AoE 1 shot groups of mobs while leveling ?

Sure thing, they should ! They are Sorcerers and Alchemists !
It's still a D&D-based game. Some classes should do medium damage but can control monsters, some should do no damage like at all but can disarm traps and some classes should use AOE to one-shot groups of 1000+ enemies !

There is no and can't be any "balance" neither in the PnP nor in CRPG. Every "balance" talks are just rubbish and should never have started.

PS. Even a pure PvP games don't have a complete balance, what have you expect from a role-driven PvE game ?!

I'm going to dodge the whole "should/balance" issue and come at this from a different angle: PnP D&D. In actual D&D, your spell casters are 100% useless almost all the time. They're towed about, protected, and tolerated so they can unleash all hell on things very quickly for a very few critical fights.
Casters wiping out entire groups with a single cast is basically de rigueur for D&D. What's not normal for D&D is that they can do this over and over for an entire dungeon.

Most of PnP is filled with RP, which every player engages in regardless of the character's actions on the table. That degree of RP never happens in an MMO. There has to be something for every class to do in every fight. DDO recognizes that the D&D/PnP norm for casters is simply not fun in an MMO and thus created SP to permit casters to be part of the mix.

What we have here is not a balance issue. It's a paradigm war between MMO and D&D. Balance is collateral damage.

For example, in pen&paper at low levels all casters should be using missile weapons. At higher levels they could use spell to become equals to fighers and to go melee. The spells in all levels should be used to defeat tough enemies in difficult situations. They are life savers in some situations and temporal artillery from time to time (but not always specially taking into account that in pen&paper and in most d&d games there is friendly fire. Because there is no friendly fire casters are super powerful gods. Of course it does not that help that in ddo online they can use spells without using mana and worse yet that mana is never depleted no matter how long is the dungeon. ) Paladins have this dynamic too but can be melee and have not aoe nor 1-shot except for undead. They don't use divine spells constantly. They choose to use them at the most difficult moment. Not sure why all melees should never have fun but casters should have fun always.
That's how it is in ddo. Mantaining the right mouse button is neither fun and is what most melee players need to do. Not much difference than it would be if casters were like in pen&paper. I bet if casters were using missile weapons and not using lasers every second they would kill as much as fighters.

Currently in ddo nor even traps are needed to be disarmed for casters (all types of casters except paladins). In hc right now... lol. I am a paladin and I only follow my group. Nor even against undead my class is useful. Casters wipe undead in one-two shots. Even whole rooms of enemies are one shooted. Most casters are gods therefore I need to be careful and not to do what they do. They walk pass through traps unharmed while I get 40-80% of my hp gone. They don't tell people if there is a trap. They don't need a trapper. They also have as much hitpoints as a pure melee fighter.

Casters play as people play all classes in the mmorpg Neverwinter. But at least in Neverwinter you do try to dodge things manually. In ddo casters don't need to do that. Their attacks have a long range and no enemies are ever able to reach them. Of course at the rare ocassion this happens... they barely ever get damaged even if they are pure casters and wear robes. Shrugs.

At least ddo developers should consider to make sure that caster would need to rest in a shrine in the longest dungeons but right now... casters don't need to refill mana. That blue bar is just a cosmetic thing.

[cmecu]

15 are bank toons. The bank toons are either level 10 or 20 (depending on what cap was when I started playing them.) Or 15 where I made an iconic banker. (Lots of people probably did and this is your spike at 15.)

Isnt that sad that we need that many bank mules? We are way past the point of no more bank space, and they are still putting out content with new items.. those items have no place to go... Wish they would get to work on overhauling bank space so we dont have to have a full roster of bank mules.

[Tilomere]

Caster vs. melee vs. ranged DPS is a relevant question but you are cherry picking your numbers, so this won't lead anywhere.

I am going to call BS on this as I don't think you are attempting to show all classes in their best light.

Yes, OP is cherry picking numbers and by he looks of it gear as well.

Most of these style threads always cherry pick builds, instances, quests (*cough Grim), saying the same thing. But not really being truthful.

You cherry pick, I cherry pick. I think you get the points.

If you really want to compare apples to apples, show your numbers for a) Holy Retribution, b) a 6 Rogue / 6 Ranger / 3 Bard using Sniper Shot with MoM, and c) DBF / Meteor Swarm / on non-helpless targets

He posts a bunch of helpless kobolds hit by a DBF crit using the best heroic weapon ofc, and then follows up by an unbuffed pally with a SoS, how objective do you really think he is trying to be?

The disparity is not as large as the 1 big hit numbers can tell ...

It is constantly ignored on the nerf Sorcerer threads, that Dragonborn Fire Savant is not the only build, by all means an edge case. When was the last time anyone seen a human earth savant dominating content for example? Human is by far not the worse choice of course.

3. Your statistics in the original post show the exact opposite of what you claim: largely consistent distribution, with small spikes at all the starting locations (1, 4, 7, 15, and 20 for TR, Vet, Vet 2, Iconic, and ER respectively). The only part of the curve with a massive spike in players is at endgame. In other words, endgame is significantly overrepresented in terms of play. This flies in the face of the premise you set for your faulty argument.

The problem with heroic leveling balance has nothing to do with class balance, it has to do with the fact that past life and reaper tree power distorts anything. If you can't dominate with any class with an accomplished character you are doing something wrong.

Part of the problem with this discussion is also that you are comparing multi-life casters vs. multi-life melee.

Both Sorcerer and Alchemist are squishy and can't solo as well unless they got TRs behind them.

Their incredibly damage compensates for their incredibly squishiness.

I don't know how to give feed back on this other than post on forums but DDO really should not remove things that people who like this game have spent a lot of time and real world money (res cakes etc) to get.

I'm just going to multiquote and leave this as the single response to everything:

This is wrong, see hardcore stats now in OP or a few posts up, even post nerf.

[Karthunk]

Currently in ddo nor even traps are needed to be disarmed for casters (all types of casters except paladins). In hc right now... lol. I am a paladin and I only follow my group. Nor even against undead my class is useful. Casters wipe undead in one-two shots. Even whole rooms of enemies are one shooted. Most casters are gods therefore I need to be careful and not to do what they do. They walk pass through traps unharmed while I get 40-80% of my hp gone. They don't tell people if there is a trap. They don't need a trapper. They also have as much hitpoints as a pure melee fighter.

Casters play as people play all classes in the mmorpg Neverwinter. But at least in Neverwinter you do try to dodge things manually. In ddo casters don't need to do that. Their attacks have a long range and no enemies are ever able to reach them. Of course at the rare ocassion this happens... they barely ever get damaged even if they are pure casters and wear robes. Shrugs.

At least ddo developers should consider to make sure that caster would need to rest in a shrine in the longest dungeons but right now... casters don't need to refill mana. That blue bar is just a cosmetic thing.

You are useless because you are currently playing behind the casters. A good melee character gets the initial agression and stacks the npcs to be AE down.

In what world do.casters not have to worry about traps? Sure, some traps can be timed but if I'm playing a caster I am not just "running" through traps.

If the casters have more hps than you as a melee I would highly suggest reevaluating your build.