U59 Caster Reccomendations, <3

[Marshal_Lannes]

This disproportionate push on draconic while offering no real alternative for Sonic, Force/Phys, Light/Alignment means even casters who are meant to specialize into those elements feel forced to play into draconic in order to deal viable damage while those classes have no form of bypass because "Your primary spells aren't typical immunities"

Sonic has some of the best support in Fatesinger. Arguably the best tier 4 core it turns your shouts into massive heals allowing you to function as both DPS and Healer. Also adds excellent damage to shouts and sonic blasts and Master of Music is one of the few master feats that really performs well.

You do touch on a key point though when Shiradi was nerfed, Draconic became the primary choice for most casters. Shiradi should never have been nerfed, at least not in an across-the-board 20%+ reduction. All 20% reductions are bad ideas and only lead to people fleeing from the choice and going to something else. Draconic was essentially forced upon us. I also agree that the EDs offer too little in attractive epic spells for casters. Primal has some things going for it but these are mostly at the low tiers and the Destiny falls behind Draconic as you go up the tree.

Cold and Fire are popular choices because of game design around items. These two elements are by far the most supported with items and filigree. If we had items in the game that had synergy with say, Shadowdancer casting, we'd see more casters in Shadowdancer. This is more a question of loot design and not class design.

Back to the upcoming update, I feel that if casters must be nerfed, the proposed changes are acceptable. They are only going to affect a small subset of gameplay (R7 and above) and they are moderate and reasonable compared to previous changes made to things like Shiradi or IPS.

[mikarddo]

Back to the upcoming update, I feel that if casters must be nerfed, the proposed changes are acceptable. They are only going to affect a small subset of gameplay (R7 and above) and they are moderate and reasonable compared to previous changes made to things like Shiradi or IPS.

IPS nerf was as 20% reduction. The R10 nerf in U59 is a 33% reduction. How do you see that as "moderate"?

The other reductions might be, but the R10 reduction is really huge.

[Lotoc]

Sonic has some of the best support in Fatesinger. Arguably the best tier 4 core it turns your shouts into massive heals allowing you to function as both DPS and Healer. Also adds excellent damage to shouts and sonic blasts and Master of Music is one of the few master feats that really performs well.

Fatesinger is a funny case honestly, the very vocal enhancement may be one of my favorites and is one I hope weaker casters like arti get a mirror of in future.
It brings horn of thunder up a little ahead of acid well on average dice damage per cl (4d6+12 averaging 26 vs 1d6+18 averaging 21.5) but bard doesn't get as many CLs and has to split scaling between sonic and electric, so it's just about on par with 9th level spells.
My biggest issue is with strikes and their scaling, bard gets one that's at least interesting and has its own builder/spender system but 1d6+1 per cl is incredibly low and its saving grace is being a 2 second cooldown and having no MCL while most every other strike has a MCL of 20.

By the way, shiradi absolutely did need nerfs, it wasn't a 30% proc but more like 7 different procs each rolling an independent 30% then having a shared .1 second internal cooldown. Much higher proc rate than it should have had but also getting another layer that people fixated on more with a true 30% chance in stay x.