I'm confused here because I've actually played this game significantly longer than you have. So are you trying to say you remember more nerf cycles than I do? If you're making that claim, you might want to try checking someone's join date before assuming they haven't been around long enough to recognize a half-baked fool notion when they see it.
You're the one who made the accusation first, I just turned it around on you.
And... now you have a problem with it? Well if you don't want that... then don't start it.
The idea is sound.
This is where you claim you forgot the password to your old account and had to make a new one. Predictable.
But no I never bothered to open my account on these boards... never even considered it, not at first. I didn't start coming here until I saw a chance to make things different.
Last time around I was blindsided by all the changes that hit.
I will not be so this time.
It was a mistake for me to stay on the sidelines last time around and assume it would never affect me,
Ah, I see that I've been feeding a troll here. I should have realized as much when you were honestly saying that CW need a damage bump. You fundamentally misunderstand Neverwinter's combat mechanics and limitations. Furthermore you appear to have no experience with any other MMO's or MMO mechanics in general. The fact you don't seem to understand how DPS is calculated or how lengthy cooldowns are not possible in a game with four powers is further proof.
Comparing Neverwinter to any D&D intellectual property should have been a big clue.
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silverquickMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 1Arc User
Ah, I see that I've been feeding a troll here. I should have realized as much when you were honestly saying that CW need a damage bump. You fundamentally misunderstand Neverwinter's combat mechanics and limitations. Furthermore you appear to have no experience with any other MMO's or MMO mechanics in general. The fact you don't seem to understand how DPS is calculated or how lengthy cooldowns are not possible in a game with four powers is further proof.
Comparing Neverwinter to any D&D intellectual property should have been a big clue.
Yeah totally, I've NEVER... played any other MMO... Never played this game since July, have no clue obviously... heck I bet I've never ever even played a CW before. NEVER done any dungeon, never grouped in multiple parties with multiple configurations from 9k all the way up to 15k gs.
I am obviously a clueless newbie with no concept of game mechanics whatsoever.
You are my master, and god, and I am so sorry, I obviously bow to your superior knowledge..
There are you happy now?
Did that sooth your poor ego? Now you can feel good about yourself and tell yourself you're the master of all knowledge, and reality won't interfere with your little world.
Ah, I see that I've been feeding a troll here. I should have realized as much when you were honestly saying that CW need a damage bump.
You still haven't answered the fundamental problem with your suggestion, which is if you raise CW damage on spells to be as high as stacking 5 CW now than stacking 5 CW afterwards will be as powerful as 25 CW in a given instance in a given fight.
While it would be amusing to kill an end of dungeon boss in one cast rotation from 5 wizards, it would sadly not be considered 'balance' by anyone. (Not that it isn't basically that now, but it would compound the issue exponentially.)
And if one wizard is enough to nuke one group of add's, then 5 wizards is enough to nuke 5 groups of adds, and any cooldown that made a single wizard only able to nuke every 6th add pull isn't a class anyone is going to play given that in between your cycle of huge nukes you would be doing nothing except admiring the rustic architecture for 5 out of 6 pulls. (I.E. Most of the dungeon run you do nothing. Is that fun in an arcade game?)
Any answers that do not address your fundamental misunderstanding on that one issue is pretty much trolling.
MoF/Thaum CWSS/Thaum CWIV/Protector GFSW/Combat HRSM/Destroyer GWFWK/Executioner TRDO/Faithful DC
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silverquickMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 1Arc User
You still haven't answered the fundamental problem with your suggestion, which is if you raise CW damage on spells to be as high as stacking 5 CW now than stacking 5 CW afterwards will be as powerful as 25 CW in a given instance in a given fight.
Any answers that do not address your fundamental misunderstanding on that one issue is pretty much trolling.
Huh? Who said that? I sure didn't.
Ok then... I'll slow it down for you...
Step 1: Increasing Damage... but Increasing Spell Timers.... by the same amount... leading to... *shock boggle* The same actual DPS.. not more DPS.
Step 2: That's a simple concept to grasp...
I do not know how your mind translated that into "more damage". But somehow it did apparently.
10,000 damage every 10 seconds... vs 20,000 damage every 20 seconds are the same things.
There's no increase in damage there, its the same...
Step 3: Mobs have limited health, only so much damage can be done on any given group, if one Mage is able to nuke down all the small stuff in one shot... and then cannot cast and cast and cast repeatedly... like he can do now... It means well... just what I said it did.... same damage, less ability to cast quickly.
Step 4: When ONE mage is nuking down all the Adds...because... well now he can... if you adjust his damage accordingly....
What is the second mage going to do? Nuke Air?
Or will he be sitting there on his thumbs looking useless. Yeah I'd say you can fill that slot with a single target damager who is much more capable of taking on the Elites with solid consistent DPS and shorter timers... than the guy sitting on his thumbs. Because their actual DPS is and has always been larger than the mage, on a.... *shock* *boggle*... DAMAGE per SECOND scale.
Step 4.5
IE they do actually outdamage a mage on single targets. Because their actual Damage per Second is higher on a single target. The mage's damage is only inflated in Paingiver because the number of targets multiply the overall damage to an extreme. Giving an illusion that's he's doing more damage when in reality he's doing less damage per target... but on more targets. This gets multiplied to an outrageous degree the more and more mobs there are... giving the illusion its more damage per target.... when in reality its not.
Step 5: I do not know how your mind is translating this into "more damage" its the same damage... but done by one mage rather than two or three during any single encounter. Ergo... only one mage needed.
So its obvious you are not understanding a very simple concept. I suspect its because you keep thinking like the Uber Gear folks who can do that kind of damage right now... but can nuke and nuke and nuke over and over again because they HAVE thousand dollar characters combined with short recast timers.
Wizard Damage is mostly coming from buff/debuff stacking. The two most popular cookie cutter builds on the forums are stox and grimah ones and they differ only in which debuffs to take. When you are off out getting your peridots in the dread ring you don't see 80k shards. In a dungeon its not exactly uncommon. If they take out some of the dubuffs or reduce them and give other classes more debuffs they absolutely would be more wanted because buff/debuff is what its all about. You would still see wacky wizard damage but you wouldn't see it so much in wizard stacking parties. The other classes would see more damage too, gfs probably need their base improved a bit on top of that, so you would have less status anxiety.
Module 3 is troubling in that regard with the gwf debuff being annihilated and the gf power buff getting smashed too. TRs and HRs don't seem to do a lot in that regard either. DCs do and a DC debuff stacking makes things go much faster and smoother. So it looks like it will be wizards and maybe dcs only going forwards.
No idea how they fix wizards for pvp. Tenacity really screwed wizards there. They were bad before but now people walk through the control but you can't really buff the powers because it would wreak havoc in pve and the damage feats are for the kind of sustained damage of a dungeon. Well you can make your wizard tankier but the other classes are even tankier and do more damage or damage and control so you really just prolong your fate. The whole game mode is gloriously unfair and tedious anyway so its kind of a who cares situation.
No idea how they fix wizards for pvp. Tenacity really screwed wizards there. They were bad before but now people walk through the control but you can't really buff the powers because it would wreak havoc in pve and the damage feats are for the kind of sustained damage of a dungeon. Well you can make your wizard tankier but the other classes are even tankier and do more damage or damage and control so you really just prolong your fate. The whole game mode is gloriously unfair and tedious anyway so its kind of a who cares situation.
They need to 100% separate PVE damage from PVP damage. Otherwise it they can't fix one without breaking the other.
If they actually lowered CW damage (due to all the incorrect assumptions people have made about CW damage), CW's would not be worth bringing to a dungeon, debuffs or otherwise they would be a liability. In my opinion ST, Sing etc. would be pretty much worthless without the ability to take out the endless hoards of adds. Chalk it up to poor dungeon design, but it is what it is. CW damage needs to remain what it is for PVE.
The base damage is fine where it is but wizards are getting the big numbers through the feating. Like if you made a pure survival orientated wizard and went oppressor for the pvp and took none or very few of the debuff feats and wore pvp gear your wizard would do pretty HAMSTER poor damage in dungeons, especially if there wasn't another wizard adding debuffs even though the base damage on the encounters would be fairly similar. It wouldn't be the same because of power stacking but it would close enough. I've seen this once or twice in mc when we took some guy from lfg and it turned out he was a total pillowfists because he could run faster after teleporting etc.
That said if you nerfed the buff/debuff feats into the ground and made no effort to increase the debuffs that other classes give you would just have very, very long runs. And that isn't something cryptic are above doing.
Anyway the point I'm trying to make isn't to hurt the encounters just to change where the things that magnify them come from a bit.
I'm pretty sure that was never intended to be a "feature" of Storm Pillar.
Actually it was... they just didn't think things through on this one. It has multiple uses. One of which is.. if you don't target any mobs around you, it goes off as an AoE in the area around you hitting all mobs surrounding you. So it was given a base AP gain.
But the spell itself is hopelessly underpowered compared to both Chilling Cloud and Magic Missile. In the same time it takes to charge up a single Storm Pillar, you will just massively outamage it with either Chilling Cloud (which gives a small AoE, and Chill) or Magic Missiles which give stacks of arcane mastery and much more damage. On top of that even if you could use it, its very situational.
I think as an example in a 12k GS, you're looking at around 2000 damage on a full charge 3 second charge on the main target. In the same amount of time you can easily triple this with a magic missile. And even the AoE effect on it, is far lesser than the Chilling Cloud. Its completely non competitive in the At Will power category for mages.
In order to make Storm Pillar actually viable and usable, it would need to be doubled or more in its current damage, or the charge time would have to be cut in half. Then you'd actually see mages using it for what its intended to be. If it was doing a good 5k damage after 3 seconds at a 12k gear score and 2.5k aoe, then at least it would be situational and useful.
Currently its only worth specing one point in, to use the charge effect to top of their action points. But that's about it. And if you're AP guage is empty it takes far too long to charge up from scratch if you're in any kind of actual combat. So only usable... as an example, when you're outside of the main boss fight and want to have a full AP guage before going in, or to prep before a major encounter which isn't something game imbalancing anyway.
That's why most mages are looking at it sarcastically going... oh horrors what a tragedy. Its so rarely used its funny.
Regardless of your views on buffing CW damage through the roof and making them watch the rest of the group clear content the other 80% of a dungeon run, CW is the most powerful PvE class and is likely to remain that way until after Module 3. I would prefer them to remove the damage component from Singularity and Oppressive Force entirely, as there's no good reason for them to deal damage at all but there's a compelling reason to keep the uncapped/high cap CC in place. (And regardless neither of them are top damage spells in an average run.)
CW either needs to be great at control or damage, having both at the same time is patently overpowered and renders any tank/damage class superfluous, which is exactly what you see in Neverwinter's dungeons. I'm not convinced making CW's better at control won't have the same effect for tanks, but at least damage dealers (which are more than half the classes/paragons) would have a chance to be value added.
The developers are likely trying to figure out a feat system that makes you choose one or the other, but I don't envy them that task considering virtually all of the content kind of revolves around them. Either way, it seems like they are aware that they accidentally designed the perfect all around class to defeat all of their PvE content and are at least talking about changing that fact.
I do think that 'buffing' Furious Immolation and 'nerfing' Storm Pillar are both completely irrelevant changes though, almost as if they're changing things just to change them. I can't really see a particular reason behind either change beyond making MoF and Spellstorm unable to generate out of combat AP and keeping both upper tier Dailies in the discard pile...
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If you remove damage from singularity and oppressive force literally no one will use them ever and wizards were great at control and did mediocre damage and the devs plainly felt that isn't the way forwards. The way forwards seems to be everyone will do less damage, yay we can all be gimps together.
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silverquickMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 1Arc User
CW either needs to be great at control or damage, having both at the same time is patently overpowered and renders any tank/damage class superfluous, which is exactly what you see in Neverwinter's dungeons. I'm not convinced making CW's better at control won't have the same effect for tanks, but at least damage dealers (which are more than half the classes/paragons) would have a chance to be value added.
Actually Spacejew,
They wont', even if the Devs nerfed CW damage into the ground, other Striker classes still would be a the bottom of the pile on Paingiver...
Do you know why?
It's because in PvE we're talking about massive numbers of Mobs. In equal gear score a rogue will easily outdamage a mage on a single target... if specced for PvE. But he's still going to be below a mage in any given dungeon when Paingiver pops up?
The reason?[/]i Even though the mage's damage is much less than a rogue on single targets. The dungeons are add fests. SO the mage's damage gets multiplied to an outrageous degree in a way that creates an illusion of having superior damage. In reality their damage per mob is lower than other Strikers... but those other strikers cannot function in a mass mob environment because most of them are just single target damagers. They have no real AoEs and never will. GWF has them, but they're only short range, ie... the range of his blades.
So no matter what they do... those other damagers are going to be at the bottom of the chart no matter what. Because there's just too many mobs that multiply mage damage to an endless degree. And I can tell you now... minus the mages, those dungeons will get nearly uncompleteable to average gear scores where they don't have ubergear.
You cannot balance things using only the TOP tier... and assume that's not going to crush all the rest of the players. Its what happened during the control powers nerf. That didn't just hit mages, it affected ALL other classes who crawl dungeons and left us in the current shoes. The difference is, where it used to be CC by Controling Mob location, its now CC by Damage.
So no, I don't believe the Devs are going to Nerf ANY mage damage. Because they know better now. I think they've already figured out that mage damage isn't that great which is what caused their current issue in PvP. Because no one complains about Mage damage... but they do about all those other single target damagers... their damage already was way over the mage. But they still can't use any of it in a Mass Mob dungeons. So.. mages continue to be the top damagers in add infested dungeons.
It won't hurt mages much as people will just keep stacking them because they need AoE support. But the rest of the classes are going to be seriously hurt by it.
Because they can't function in a mass mob environment and that's all there is to it.
... CW either needs to be great at control or damage, having both at the same time is patently overpowered and renders any tank/damage class superfluous, which is exactly what you see in Neverwinter's dungeons...
It's important to remember that there's a large amount of play in this game that doesn't take place in parties. You simply can't take a CW and remove his ability to do at least semi potent damage or nobody will ever level one up enough to do a dungeon run in the first place. That's the problem that the makers of the game created for themselves--they have constructed an environment where each class needs to be able to survive on missions solo, and yet have abilities that distinguishes them from other classes. This is the same reason why some people get to party-play and find their character isn't suited to the job people are expecting them to do.
For example folks who've been soloing as DC's show up in skirmishes and on dungeons and you sometimes notice them fighting and dealing a lot of damage while their teammates are dying all around them. Hey man, you aren't a GWF... make with the heals.
From my perspective CW's have been nerfed plenty. I can prone nothing in PvP--I can rarely and barely freeze or hold anything in PvP... entangling force used to be a great spell. Now it gives you perhaps 1 second of your opponent in the air? Most of the fighter classes are simply immune to your abilities, and laughably all a GF has to do is hold up his shield and he can stop anything from an Ice Knife to a Ray of Enfeeblement to a lightning bolt or whatever else you have on deck. Meanwhile TR's are still invisible and untargetable, and GWF's and GF's can still prone a CW repeatedly.
There's plenty of that to be found in PvE too... there's no shortage of creatures who simply ignore all control effects. It is no cakewalk taking on a formorian warrior 1-on-1 if you are a CW... it won't freeze, prone, hoist, stun, or knock back... what the heck is left? Run in circles, dodge till your wrist hurts, and just lob magic missles and drop an ice knife from time to time. Feels like fighting against a GWF except you might win.
The CW already has a HUGE drawback to go with it's heavily nerfed powers, you hit us with a club and we go squish. Almost any spell can be interrupted by bonking us on the head. The best (only?) protective spell we have is Shield, and it takes all of 3 swings to get through it. Look at the power bonuses and the defense bonuses on the gear for other classes sometime... it's impossible not to notice all the effort that has been put into making the CW not be overpowered.
Total aside - I don't mind the storm pillar thing, it's a small loss.
Presumably if they divorced the high control spells from the damage dealing spells a damage spec CW would be capable of clearing content as well as any other DPS oriented class. And yes it would probably need to deal more direct damage, and less debuff, with the control spec doing a lot less damage with more debuff. It's further complicated by a second paragon and the large number of add's in most PvE content, so it's probably best if they take their time. It still needs to happen though. I wish they would tackle it first before adjusting things that are less out of line, but I guess new content comes first.
Cryptic says that they want you to look at the performance of TR and HR as a comparison of where they want at least the GWF to be, and CW performs better in PvE even before Module 3's changes. This also makes it pretty hard to compare it to a HR.
"To be perfectly frank, the CW is very much out of line right now. They provide too much damage and their AoEs don't really conform to the same damage rules as they ideally should."
This is specifically the part I'm talking about, I just don't know if these parts sound promising...
"...we have looked at various reasons as to why they cause problems and some of that lies in their feats, some in their base ratios, some in target caps, and that is really quite a few dials to tune all at once. We are looking at where they belong and what role they need to fit into in combat, as well as ways to preserve some roles that players enjoy without making them the best option at all times."
It sounds like CW is going to be a ground-up rework, and frankly that's about what it needs.
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i really don't believe that any amount of "adjustment" is going to make up for poor dungeon design. When you design dungeons to be a giant AoE-fest with no strategy/tanking/kill priority inherent, there's really nothing you can do to balance classes when some are designed for mass AoE and some are designed for single target
nerfing everything into the ground is not the answer to poor design. all it serves to do is make bad content take longer to clear
CW does need a look in terms of damage where current dungeons are concerned. I think it makes more sense, however, to add niche roles back into future content design by eliminating the idea that stacking mobs and spamming AoE/control is the optimal way to run dungeons. An obvious solution to this problem would be to implement properties that already exist in game through feats/enchantments/etc in designing dungeon encounters.
For instance, the addition of control immunity/control duration resistant mobs with high HP and high damage abilities might be a start in facilitating the return of GFs to standard party compositions---if, and only if, these mobs can be designed so that tanking them away from the party is preferable to attempting to AoE them down.
a combination of moderate damage reduction to AoE control abilities and intelligent dungeon design would, in my opinion, be a far more appropriate response to the issues inherent to the current state of control wizards than simply redesigning the entire class, as a top to bottom redesign does not in any way solve the basic flaws in content design that created a large part of the issue in the first place.
edit: and if we're really looking at TR (current state) and HR (post split shot nerf) as the performance values that are considered "ideal", all we're really doing is making current content take longer to clear, rather than truly taking the time to address the fundamental design issues that cause the need to constantly nerf classes as the only viable way to extend said content.
the bottom line is, you nerf everyone into the ground, you make content take longer to clear. people will still clear it. the fact that it takes longer, doesn't make it good content, and doesn't mean it was well designed. it just means it took longer to clear.
I'm PvE player (mostly)
Honestly? More control won't hurt at all. All the time I hear how CW needs to be awesome at dealing damage and damage output on my CW should be my primary concern, I also heard that 2 most stupid things I did were swapping vorpal for plaguefire and sudden storm for icy terrain (right now I swapped bugged shard with storm).
I'm scratching my head trying to understand why would I want more dps when I'm supposed to be support class not dps class.
But maybe I'm wrong, maybe CW is supposed to be dps class, after all most helpful cc power is daily and rest are nerfed in affected targets probably to prevent us from controling; if CW was supposed to be real crowd controller then he would have better control powers (though icy terrain is awesome)
i really don't believe that any amount of "adjustment" is going to make up for poor dungeon design. When you design dungeons to be a giant AoE-fest with no strategy/tanking/kill priority inherent, there's really nothing you can do to balance classes when some are designed for mass AoE and some are designed for single target
I tend to agree but somethings got to give. You can see attempts to do dungeon specific roles such as the Erinyes in Mad Dragon or the Frost Golum in Frozen Heart. There is no way of knowing what Cryptic will eventually do, but if they are trying to keep play styles that people enjoy while making them not the best in every scenario it implies that damage and control will both still be options.
For all we know, the CW damage spec might do more damage than it does now. It's all speculative, and I'm not even holding my breath for Cryptic to change a single important thing at all.
edit: and if we're really looking at TR (current state) and HR (post split shot nerf) as the performance values that are considered "ideal", all we're really doing is making current content take longer to clear...
Yes, thus making you a customer longer and increasing the odd's that you will outright purchase items with cash instead of astral diamonds. In this case though, it also makes content more interesting. Taking longer isn't a bad thing if it's more than rolling over everything with a massive ball of overkill.
Honestly I'm surprised they didn't tackle CW first just because it makes farming content super easy, which results in people being able to work around the pay requirement a whole lot faster. Of course, given some 'content workarounds' it's probably moot to even talk about dungeon balance and it's relationship to classes.
MoF/Thaum CWSS/Thaum CWIV/Protector GFSW/Combat HRSM/Destroyer GWFWK/Executioner TRDO/Faithful DC
i certainly understand the rationale behind trying to make customers stay longer, but i don't think that extending poor content is going to keep customers longer than creating better content. I also don't really believe that content becomes more interesting simply because it takes longer
every attempted nerf to CW thus far has simply caused groups to take MORE wizards, not less, due to the fact that dungeon design remains unchanged. the latest buff to GWF in module 2 has been the only change made to the game since launch that actually made a class other than CW a really viable option for optimizing speed clears, and now they've taken that option away again with the damage reductions they're implementing for the GWF in module 3.
So basically, we're back to square one again, with nothing solved. Even with a massive overhaul, i truly believe that CW will remain the optimal class to stack regardless of what the developers do, quite simply because of how poorly designed dungeon content is. Even cutting damage by some arbitrary number like 70% and making all powers cap at 5 targets, CWs still have 4 encounter power slots that can be slotted with AoE, plus 2 dailies that can be slotted for AoE, so you're back to the same problem of wanting multiple wizards for the AoE chain-pulling funfest that is the lolz-worthy dungeon delve.
the issue then becomes, pvp, which seems to be the basis for which every other change in this game is being considered, since pvpers tend to spend more RL cash, to the point where we're making an entire module for it. CW is already on the lower end of the pvp class tier hierarchy, only slightly above DC, which pretty much cant' do anything anymore. Further nerfs to damage abilities are just going to create a larger gap between CW and the rest of the pack, and will just cause more crying on the forums and more knee-jerk reactions to those complaints
so in my mind, there are 2 options
you either completely eliminate control wizards from the game, and make them into some other completely different class (which obviously isn't an option at all)
or
you put some measurable amount of effort into creating content that makes other classes desirable, which really, in the grand scheme of things, it NOT rocket science, and make class balance significantly easier to achieve without breaking everything fun about the game in the process
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silverquickMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 1Arc User
Presumably if they divorced the high control spells from the damage dealing spells a damage spec CW would be capable of clearing content as well as any other DPS oriented class.
It still won't do that Spacejew.
Those other classes already do higher damage than the mage hands down. The mage will always rule in AoE based combat, the class was designed around it. No other class is capable of handling these dungeons at normal gear scores with the exception of the mage.
I'll illustrate it, lets say the mage does HALF the damage of a rogue in the standard 10 mob scenario you see in these dungeons. Lets say the mage does 50 damage and the rogue does 100 damage per target. Heck lets even say the Mobs only have 100 health just for simplicity. Here's how the scenario plays out in reality.
=======
Round 1.
Rogue: does 100 damage to one mob, killing it. Leaving 9 mobs.
Mage: Does 50 damage to all 10 mobs. Leaving 10 mobs at half health.
Monsters (For the sake of things both mage and rogue will have 220 health)
Mobs on Rogue: 9 hits for 20 damage each doing 180 damage to rogue. Leaving him with 40 health.
Mobs on Mage:: 10 hits for 20 damage each doing 200 damage to mage. Leaving him with 20 health.
======
Round 2: Rogue does 100 damage to one mob killing it. Leaving 8 mobs
Mage does 50 damage to all 10 mobs killing them all. Leaving none left.
Monsters
Mobs on Rogue: 8 hits for 20 damage each, doing 160 damage, killing the rogue.
Mobs on Mage: 0 hits, they're all dead. The party moves on.
======
Paingiver pops up and shows...
Mage on top doing 1000 damage
Rogue doing 200 damage.
BUT... who was really doing more damage? The rogue or the mage?
Mage damage is already far below the other classes and has been for some time. That's why there's now problems in PvP with mages minus actual control powers as they were nerfed. Prior the Mage could use control powers with their lower single target damage and still win matchs. But with the control powers nerf in PvP, suddenly and mysteriously people discovered how low mage damage really is compared to everyone else's. And now you have an imbalance in PvP because they nerfed control powers.
This "mages do ungodly damage" was a farce in the first place, It never needed any "adjustments" because it was never overpowering in the first place, the Dungeons just made it look that way.
^good to know there are smart people on this forum silverquick, couldn't agree more
but that makes me wonder, why the hell people care so much about paingiver stat?
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silverquickMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 1Arc User
^good to know there are smart people on this forum silverquick, couldn't agree more
but that makes me wonder, why the hell people care so much about paingiver stat?
Well thank you,
And once you understand that AoE damage and Single target damage are used for two different purposes, you understand that NONE of the other Striker classes are ever going to be able to replace a mage in these types of dungeons and compete no matter what you do.
Right now, parties take TWO mages to clear a dungeon sucking up those extra spots other classes could be filling because two mages clear that entire dungeon much more efficiently than any other striker. After all, once you know the equation above... even if you nerfed mage damage down to 34 points of damage from 50 damage, they're just going to take a 3rd mage to clear the dungeons because its still going to be more effective and faster than that rogue. He's only going to be able to kill one mob at a time no matter what he does.
SO... the solution is the complete opposite. Its to increase mage damage to cover that single slot, so extra mages are rendered irrelevant. Basically you have to make the mage damage 100. Because the other striker classes are irrelevant anyway in an AoE environment no matter how you slice it. They are for boss mobs and elite mobs. The mage is for the mass mobs. No other class can replace that no matter how much damage they do.
I suggested doubling mage damage but increasing the timers by that much, this solves both the mage multiple slot issue, and the issue in PvP. So they can do enough damage that it doesn't take 2-3 of them in a party, but only a single one.
The only thing that remains is the illusion of Paingiver which was always just an illusion in the first place and bruised poor Striker's egos.
They've been doing the wrong direction on this one for a long long time and only making things worse and worse on other classes. Nerf Mages, you're not really nerfing them.... you're nerfing everyone else in PvE.
Epeens will be epeens...if we want to shut up the "nerf the cw crowd" we should lobby Cryptic for a damage ranking for boss fights separate from overall dungeon...then the mostly OP single target classes can brag how they are the best damage dealers and we CWs are just trash men. Maybe then I can log on to the forums and not have to read all this idle HAMSTER banter about how CWs are so OP. As for PVP CWs should be able to completely ignore tenacity with our control powers and drastically increase our single target damage. This will have zero impact to our PVE OPness.
Those other classes already do higher damage than the mage hands down.
Patently untrue. Do the actual math instead of making up BS numbers and you'll see that a mages AoE is actually more damage than the single-target DPS of any class you care to make. This is because many of the CW powers, as you rightly point out, have no target cap and CW is able to stack a tremendous amount of mitigation debuff/damage buff to the powers that do (and don't) have caps. This is exactly what enables a CW team to pull virtually an entire dungeon at one time in comparative safety. Your suggestions make that playstyle easier and more profitable.
If you don't see that, it's probably because you're too busy complaining about PvP and you somehow don't see how fighting 5 guys who are virtually CC immune (With high armor versus your low/malfunctioning armor penetration) is clearly going to put you at the bottom of the pile. This was before tenacity nerfed CW's only defense. Giving you a 5 minute CD on every one of your DPS powers sounds like a real blast in PvP too if you're a voyeur style player. Tell me where that fits into a niche; or is this where you tell me CW is meant to nuke 5 players at once in PvP every few minutes?
These are mostly rhetorical questions; I do not give two flips about PvP 'balance' and apparently neither does Cryptic.
Paingiver pops up and shows...
Mage on top doing 1000 damage
Rogue doing 200 damage.
BUT... who was really doing more damage? The rogue or the mage?
The mage, by your own admission. If the mage can floor ten add's in the time it takes a rogue to kill two...well are you really that bad at math? Dungeons are nothing except add's until you hit a boss, where it throws even more adds at you. (And the add's are virtually always the bigger threat regardless.)
Perhaps unsurprisingly, nuking a ton of add's on top of the bosses head also nukes the boss. So your 'single target' isn't ever needed when there are 3, 4, or 5 of the class that can floor a group of add's in one cast rotation. Bosses are not dangerous on their own as long you are aware of the fact you have a shift key that automagically negates any heavy attack the boss has.
The AoE is enough for all situations. This is generally acknowledged as true by pretty much the entire community and the developers themselves, or else you wouldn't see groups consistently clearing content with only one class. Go ahead and get on a Castle Never team, how many CW do you see? If you said 5, you win. (This is considering that post-nerf GWF isn't going to be finding a spot in most PvE teams. As of now I would readily admit that it's probably 3 CW and 2 GWF or 2xCW, 2xGWF, and 1 DC for training wheels.)
Because the other striker classes are irrelevant anyway in an AoE environment no matter how you slice it. They are for boss mobs and elite mobs. The mage is for the mass mobs.
The mage will always rule in AoE based combat, the class was designed around it.
The issue with this statement is you appear ignorant of every dungeon in the game, and how they are all 100% add fests with virtually nothing that equates to what you would expect of an 'elite'. They all die the same, with most so-called 'Elites' not even being CC immune; and with CC immunity being only an all or nothing proposition.
So why is only one class based around fighting all those hundreds of add's?!?
IF CW did comparable damage to other classes, it would take about as much time for a rogue to kill a group with single-target as a mage would take to kill the whole group. That would be damage parity, and it is patently not present in Neverwinter in the current live version and that is not likely to change any time soon. (Nor should it.)
With CW always doing content faster, it's no surprise that people use the most efficient farming class to make AD the fastest. It directly correlates into a stronger character in a shorter time frame, with less real world money required.
There is no content where single-target damage is advantageous enough to warrant building a team around it, or even taking it along, outside of PvP. Know what happens when you bring non-GWF melee into a dungeon? Squish, mostly. Especially CN, but every dungeon makes it almost impossible to stay in melee range long enough to actually out DPS anything ranged.
PvP and PvE are entirely, and drastically, different things. CW is by general consensus the weakest PvP class, but that has a lot of causes that have nothing to do with PvE. By all means, suggest changes to fix that, but at least try not to make CW even more massively overpowered in PvE than it already is with those suggestions.
TL;DR
Pretending that feats/features/gear like Eye of the Storm, High Viziers, Malevolent Surge, Frozen Power Transfer, Transcended Master, Assailing Force, Evocation, and Nightmare Wizardry aren't some of the best PvE DPS increasing feats/features in the game isn't helping you out.
Name another class that gets so many flat percentage based increases that all stack? You can't, because none of them do. Even if the damage the powers themselves do in a direct comparison are lower, CW is capable of vastly higher heights of performance that increase proportionally to how many add's are present. That's the problem in a nutshell, and just raising damage and lowering cooldowns doesn't even come close to fixing that. It actually makes it worse.
I'm done arguing this point, as your position here is illogical in given PvE content in literally every way.
MoF/Thaum CWSS/Thaum CWIV/Protector GFSW/Combat HRSM/Destroyer GWFWK/Executioner TRDO/Faithful DC
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silverquickMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 1Arc User
Name another class that gets so many flat percentage based increases that all stack? You can't, because none of them do. Even if the damage the powers themselves do in a direct comparison are lower, CW is capable of vastly higher heights of performance that increase proportionally to how many add's are present. That's the problem in a nutshell, and just raising damage and lowering cooldowns doesn't even come close to fixing that. It actually makes it worse.
I'm done arguing this point, as your position here is illogical in given PvE content in literally every way.
Huh?
Did you just argue with me and then turn around and directly prove all of my points (while simultaneously missing the point).... and then have the brass balls to claim I was wrong and "illogical"?
You basically admitted:
1. Single Target Damagers cannot compete in an AoE environment.
2. Mages are the only AoE class
3. Mages thereby are the only class capable of handling/controlling those adds through damage.
4. Single Target Damagers will never be able to match the overall damage... EVEN THOUGH they're doing more damage per target than the mage is currently.
5. Because of this, mages get stacked in parties over Single Target damagers because the Dungeons are AoE infested... where single target damagers are useless.
6. Multiple mages suck up extra spots in a party leaving other Strikers out of parties. Because they can't and never will be able to compete in a mass mob environment no matter what you do.
Did you or did you not just admit to that?
Basically All the points I just made... You agreed are true... and then... called me "illogical" for saying Nerfing mage damage doesn't do the Strikers any good because they're still useless in mass mob situations and just results in more mage stacking.
1. I stated... double mage damage... double the recast timers.
2. Reducing mage damage only makes people stack more mages to get through the content.
3. Mobs have limited numbers of Health.
4. Increasing mage damage to allow a single mage to take out the adds instead of multiple mages, will result in less need for more party slots taken by mages.
5. Increasing the damage to allow this, yet increasing the recast timers as well results in the same actual DPS... not more actual damage...
6. This means the mage will spend it all in one chunk to nuke the adds..... and WON'T be able to use sustained single target damage on the Boss Mobs and Elite mobs as he'll be waiting on recast timers...
7. Creating need for those Single Target damagers.... once again who can use sustained persistent single target damage on all the stronger mobs.
I thought that was pretty straight forward, and looks pretty logical to me.
i find it absolutely absurd that the two of you continue to argue about how to best alter the class to keep it in line with other classes/make it less attractive to bring multiple wizards to dungeons
you CAN'T do it by altering the class
short of removing the control wizard from the game entirely, there is no possible way to take a class where every single worthwhile ability is an AoE ability (on trash encounters) and make it balanced while you still have dungeons designed and optimized FOR AOE DAMAGE DEALING.
no amount of buffing/nerfing/balancing is going to fix a class in a broken system. Increasing cooldowns makes taking more CWs less a preference than a necessity. Nerfing damage does the same thing.
the ONLY solution to the problem is to address the source of every balance issue in this game when it comes to PvE, which is basic dungeon design.
let me be clear
silverquick, your ideas will not work. everything you've proposed simply makes 5 CW parties more necessary for speed clearing. If you give wizard AoE abilities MORE damage, even with longer cooldowns, the result will be to have MORE wizards in optimal parties to take advantage of that damage increase, casting spells in a rotation so that no mobs survive after all 5 CWs have cast a single rotation, and run on to the next mass AoE pull. Buffing anything on the current CW class build reduces the need for single target damage dealers, not the opposite. The simple fact remains: encounters designed for AoE will NEVER cater to striker classes unless those classes are given AoE abilities, or the encounters themselves are redesigned to make some small iota of sense for the class roles that are constantly talked about by developers, but seemingly never actually understood or implemented by those developers
if the devs are actually reading these posts, which they may, or may not be, stop giving them ridiculous feedback that is, if nothing else, counterproductive to truly balancing PvE combat in this game. spend your energy instead on considering what changes to current content might facilitate class balance with less actual work on the classes themselves.
you still have both PvE and PvP in this game, so with the current system, you're trying to balance classes so that they perform equally well in AoE-centric PvE encounters and single-target PvP encounters using the same skill sets, class mechanics, and feat builds
how can you possibly think there's a way to make that work?
Comments
You're the one who made the accusation first, I just turned it around on you.
And... now you have a problem with it? Well if you don't want that... then don't start it.
The idea is sound.
But no I never bothered to open my account on these boards... never even considered it, not at first. I didn't start coming here until I saw a chance to make things different.
Last time around I was blindsided by all the changes that hit.
I will not be so this time.
It was a mistake for me to stay on the sidelines last time around and assume it would never affect me,
I will not make that mistake again.
Comparing Neverwinter to any D&D intellectual property should have been a big clue.
Yeah totally, I've NEVER... played any other MMO... Never played this game since July, have no clue obviously... heck I bet I've never ever even played a CW before. NEVER done any dungeon, never grouped in multiple parties with multiple configurations from 9k all the way up to 15k gs.
I am obviously a clueless newbie with no concept of game mechanics whatsoever.
You are my master, and god, and I am so sorry, I obviously bow to your superior knowledge..
There are you happy now?
Did that sooth your poor ego? Now you can feel good about yourself and tell yourself you're the master of all knowledge, and reality won't interfere with your little world.
You still haven't answered the fundamental problem with your suggestion, which is if you raise CW damage on spells to be as high as stacking 5 CW now than stacking 5 CW afterwards will be as powerful as 25 CW in a given instance in a given fight.
While it would be amusing to kill an end of dungeon boss in one cast rotation from 5 wizards, it would sadly not be considered 'balance' by anyone. (Not that it isn't basically that now, but it would compound the issue exponentially.)
And if one wizard is enough to nuke one group of add's, then 5 wizards is enough to nuke 5 groups of adds, and any cooldown that made a single wizard only able to nuke every 6th add pull isn't a class anyone is going to play given that in between your cycle of huge nukes you would be doing nothing except admiring the rustic architecture for 5 out of 6 pulls. (I.E. Most of the dungeon run you do nothing. Is that fun in an arcade game?)
Any answers that do not address your fundamental misunderstanding on that one issue is pretty much trolling.
Huh? Who said that? I sure didn't.
Ok then... I'll slow it down for you...
Step 1: Increasing Damage... but Increasing Spell Timers.... by the same amount... leading to... *shock boggle* The same actual DPS.. not more DPS.
Step 2: That's a simple concept to grasp...
I do not know how your mind translated that into "more damage". But somehow it did apparently.
10,000 damage every 10 seconds... vs 20,000 damage every 20 seconds are the same things.
There's no increase in damage there, its the same...
Step 3: Mobs have limited health, only so much damage can be done on any given group, if one Mage is able to nuke down all the small stuff in one shot... and then cannot cast and cast and cast repeatedly... like he can do now... It means well... just what I said it did.... same damage, less ability to cast quickly.
Step 4: When ONE mage is nuking down all the Adds...because... well now he can... if you adjust his damage accordingly....
What is the second mage going to do? Nuke Air?
Or will he be sitting there on his thumbs looking useless. Yeah I'd say you can fill that slot with a single target damager who is much more capable of taking on the Elites with solid consistent DPS and shorter timers... than the guy sitting on his thumbs. Because their actual DPS is and has always been larger than the mage, on a.... *shock* *boggle*... DAMAGE per SECOND scale.
Step 4.5
IE they do actually outdamage a mage on single targets. Because their actual Damage per Second is higher on a single target. The mage's damage is only inflated in Paingiver because the number of targets multiply the overall damage to an extreme. Giving an illusion that's he's doing more damage when in reality he's doing less damage per target... but on more targets. This gets multiplied to an outrageous degree the more and more mobs there are... giving the illusion its more damage per target.... when in reality its not.
Step 5: I do not know how your mind is translating this into "more damage" its the same damage... but done by one mage rather than two or three during any single encounter. Ergo... only one mage needed.
So its obvious you are not understanding a very simple concept. I suspect its because you keep thinking like the Uber Gear folks who can do that kind of damage right now... but can nuke and nuke and nuke over and over again because they HAVE thousand dollar characters combined with short recast timers.
Module 3 is troubling in that regard with the gwf debuff being annihilated and the gf power buff getting smashed too. TRs and HRs don't seem to do a lot in that regard either. DCs do and a DC debuff stacking makes things go much faster and smoother. So it looks like it will be wizards and maybe dcs only going forwards.
No idea how they fix wizards for pvp. Tenacity really screwed wizards there. They were bad before but now people walk through the control but you can't really buff the powers because it would wreak havoc in pve and the damage feats are for the kind of sustained damage of a dungeon. Well you can make your wizard tankier but the other classes are even tankier and do more damage or damage and control so you really just prolong your fate. The whole game mode is gloriously unfair and tedious anyway so its kind of a who cares situation.
They need to 100% separate PVE damage from PVP damage. Otherwise it they can't fix one without breaking the other.
If they actually lowered CW damage (due to all the incorrect assumptions people have made about CW damage), CW's would not be worth bringing to a dungeon, debuffs or otherwise they would be a liability. In my opinion ST, Sing etc. would be pretty much worthless without the ability to take out the endless hoards of adds. Chalk it up to poor dungeon design, but it is what it is. CW damage needs to remain what it is for PVE.
That said if you nerfed the buff/debuff feats into the ground and made no effort to increase the debuffs that other classes give you would just have very, very long runs. And that isn't something cryptic are above doing.
Anyway the point I'm trying to make isn't to hurt the encounters just to change where the things that magnify them come from a bit.
On the Preview server, Storm Pillar no longer charges AP out of combat.
lol what a tragedy
Actually it was... they just didn't think things through on this one. It has multiple uses. One of which is.. if you don't target any mobs around you, it goes off as an AoE in the area around you hitting all mobs surrounding you. So it was given a base AP gain.
But the spell itself is hopelessly underpowered compared to both Chilling Cloud and Magic Missile. In the same time it takes to charge up a single Storm Pillar, you will just massively outamage it with either Chilling Cloud (which gives a small AoE, and Chill) or Magic Missiles which give stacks of arcane mastery and much more damage. On top of that even if you could use it, its very situational.
I think as an example in a 12k GS, you're looking at around 2000 damage on a full charge 3 second charge on the main target. In the same amount of time you can easily triple this with a magic missile. And even the AoE effect on it, is far lesser than the Chilling Cloud. Its completely non competitive in the At Will power category for mages.
In order to make Storm Pillar actually viable and usable, it would need to be doubled or more in its current damage, or the charge time would have to be cut in half. Then you'd actually see mages using it for what its intended to be. If it was doing a good 5k damage after 3 seconds at a 12k gear score and 2.5k aoe, then at least it would be situational and useful.
Currently its only worth specing one point in, to use the charge effect to top of their action points. But that's about it. And if you're AP guage is empty it takes far too long to charge up from scratch if you're in any kind of actual combat. So only usable... as an example, when you're outside of the main boss fight and want to have a full AP guage before going in, or to prep before a major encounter which isn't something game imbalancing anyway.
That's why most mages are looking at it sarcastically going... oh horrors what a tragedy. Its so rarely used its funny.
CW either needs to be great at control or damage, having both at the same time is patently overpowered and renders any tank/damage class superfluous, which is exactly what you see in Neverwinter's dungeons. I'm not convinced making CW's better at control won't have the same effect for tanks, but at least damage dealers (which are more than half the classes/paragons) would have a chance to be value added.
The developers are likely trying to figure out a feat system that makes you choose one or the other, but I don't envy them that task considering virtually all of the content kind of revolves around them. Either way, it seems like they are aware that they accidentally designed the perfect all around class to defeat all of their PvE content and are at least talking about changing that fact.
I do think that 'buffing' Furious Immolation and 'nerfing' Storm Pillar are both completely irrelevant changes though, almost as if they're changing things just to change them. I can't really see a particular reason behind either change beyond making MoF and Spellstorm unable to generate out of combat AP and keeping both upper tier Dailies in the discard pile...
Actually Spacejew,
They wont', even if the Devs nerfed CW damage into the ground, other Striker classes still would be a the bottom of the pile on Paingiver...
Do you know why?
It's because in PvE we're talking about massive numbers of Mobs. In equal gear score a rogue will easily outdamage a mage on a single target... if specced for PvE. But he's still going to be below a mage in any given dungeon when Paingiver pops up?
The reason?[/]i Even though the mage's damage is much less than a rogue on single targets. The dungeons are add fests. SO the mage's damage gets multiplied to an outrageous degree in a way that creates an illusion of having superior damage. In reality their damage per mob is lower than other Strikers... but those other strikers cannot function in a mass mob environment because most of them are just single target damagers. They have no real AoEs and never will. GWF has them, but they're only short range, ie... the range of his blades.
So no matter what they do... those other damagers are going to be at the bottom of the chart no matter what. Because there's just too many mobs that multiply mage damage to an endless degree. And I can tell you now... minus the mages, those dungeons will get nearly uncompleteable to average gear scores where they don't have ubergear.
You cannot balance things using only the TOP tier... and assume that's not going to crush all the rest of the players. Its what happened during the control powers nerf. That didn't just hit mages, it affected ALL other classes who crawl dungeons and left us in the current shoes. The difference is, where it used to be CC by Controling Mob location, its now CC by Damage.
So no, I don't believe the Devs are going to Nerf ANY mage damage. Because they know better now. I think they've already figured out that mage damage isn't that great which is what caused their current issue in PvP. Because no one complains about Mage damage... but they do about all those other single target damagers... their damage already was way over the mage. But they still can't use any of it in a Mass Mob dungeons. So.. mages continue to be the top damagers in add infested dungeons.
It won't hurt mages much as people will just keep stacking them because they need AoE support. But the rest of the classes are going to be seriously hurt by it.
Because they can't function in a mass mob environment and that's all there is to it.
It's important to remember that there's a large amount of play in this game that doesn't take place in parties. You simply can't take a CW and remove his ability to do at least semi potent damage or nobody will ever level one up enough to do a dungeon run in the first place. That's the problem that the makers of the game created for themselves--they have constructed an environment where each class needs to be able to survive on missions solo, and yet have abilities that distinguishes them from other classes. This is the same reason why some people get to party-play and find their character isn't suited to the job people are expecting them to do.
For example folks who've been soloing as DC's show up in skirmishes and on dungeons and you sometimes notice them fighting and dealing a lot of damage while their teammates are dying all around them. Hey man, you aren't a GWF... make with the heals.
From my perspective CW's have been nerfed plenty. I can prone nothing in PvP--I can rarely and barely freeze or hold anything in PvP... entangling force used to be a great spell. Now it gives you perhaps 1 second of your opponent in the air? Most of the fighter classes are simply immune to your abilities, and laughably all a GF has to do is hold up his shield and he can stop anything from an Ice Knife to a Ray of Enfeeblement to a lightning bolt or whatever else you have on deck. Meanwhile TR's are still invisible and untargetable, and GWF's and GF's can still prone a CW repeatedly.
There's plenty of that to be found in PvE too... there's no shortage of creatures who simply ignore all control effects. It is no cakewalk taking on a formorian warrior 1-on-1 if you are a CW... it won't freeze, prone, hoist, stun, or knock back... what the heck is left? Run in circles, dodge till your wrist hurts, and just lob magic missles and drop an ice knife from time to time. Feels like fighting against a GWF except you might win.
The CW already has a HUGE drawback to go with it's heavily nerfed powers, you hit us with a club and we go squish. Almost any spell can be interrupted by bonking us on the head. The best (only?) protective spell we have is Shield, and it takes all of 3 swings to get through it. Look at the power bonuses and the defense bonuses on the gear for other classes sometime... it's impossible not to notice all the effort that has been put into making the CW not be overpowered.
Total aside - I don't mind the storm pillar thing, it's a small loss.
Cryptic says that they want you to look at the performance of TR and HR as a comparison of where they want at least the GWF to be, and CW performs better in PvE even before Module 3's changes. This also makes it pretty hard to compare it to a HR.
This is specifically the part I'm talking about, I just don't know if these parts sound promising...
It sounds like CW is going to be a ground-up rework, and frankly that's about what it needs.
nerfing everything into the ground is not the answer to poor design. all it serves to do is make bad content take longer to clear
CW does need a look in terms of damage where current dungeons are concerned. I think it makes more sense, however, to add niche roles back into future content design by eliminating the idea that stacking mobs and spamming AoE/control is the optimal way to run dungeons. An obvious solution to this problem would be to implement properties that already exist in game through feats/enchantments/etc in designing dungeon encounters.
For instance, the addition of control immunity/control duration resistant mobs with high HP and high damage abilities might be a start in facilitating the return of GFs to standard party compositions---if, and only if, these mobs can be designed so that tanking them away from the party is preferable to attempting to AoE them down.
a combination of moderate damage reduction to AoE control abilities and intelligent dungeon design would, in my opinion, be a far more appropriate response to the issues inherent to the current state of control wizards than simply redesigning the entire class, as a top to bottom redesign does not in any way solve the basic flaws in content design that created a large part of the issue in the first place.
edit: and if we're really looking at TR (current state) and HR (post split shot nerf) as the performance values that are considered "ideal", all we're really doing is making current content take longer to clear, rather than truly taking the time to address the fundamental design issues that cause the need to constantly nerf classes as the only viable way to extend said content.
the bottom line is, you nerf everyone into the ground, you make content take longer to clear. people will still clear it. the fact that it takes longer, doesn't make it good content, and doesn't mean it was well designed. it just means it took longer to clear.
Honestly? More control won't hurt at all. All the time I hear how CW needs to be awesome at dealing damage and damage output on my CW should be my primary concern, I also heard that 2 most stupid things I did were swapping vorpal for plaguefire and sudden storm for icy terrain (right now I swapped bugged shard with storm).
I'm scratching my head trying to understand why would I want more dps when I'm supposed to be support class not dps class.
But maybe I'm wrong, maybe CW is supposed to be dps class, after all most helpful cc power is daily and rest are nerfed in affected targets probably to prevent us from controling; if CW was supposed to be real crowd controller then he would have better control powers (though icy terrain is awesome)
I tend to agree but somethings got to give. You can see attempts to do dungeon specific roles such as the Erinyes in Mad Dragon or the Frost Golum in Frozen Heart. There is no way of knowing what Cryptic will eventually do, but if they are trying to keep play styles that people enjoy while making them not the best in every scenario it implies that damage and control will both still be options.
For all we know, the CW damage spec might do more damage than it does now. It's all speculative, and I'm not even holding my breath for Cryptic to change a single important thing at all.
Yes, thus making you a customer longer and increasing the odd's that you will outright purchase items with cash instead of astral diamonds. In this case though, it also makes content more interesting. Taking longer isn't a bad thing if it's more than rolling over everything with a massive ball of overkill.
Honestly I'm surprised they didn't tackle CW first just because it makes farming content super easy, which results in people being able to work around the pay requirement a whole lot faster. Of course, given some 'content workarounds' it's probably moot to even talk about dungeon balance and it's relationship to classes.
every attempted nerf to CW thus far has simply caused groups to take MORE wizards, not less, due to the fact that dungeon design remains unchanged. the latest buff to GWF in module 2 has been the only change made to the game since launch that actually made a class other than CW a really viable option for optimizing speed clears, and now they've taken that option away again with the damage reductions they're implementing for the GWF in module 3.
So basically, we're back to square one again, with nothing solved. Even with a massive overhaul, i truly believe that CW will remain the optimal class to stack regardless of what the developers do, quite simply because of how poorly designed dungeon content is. Even cutting damage by some arbitrary number like 70% and making all powers cap at 5 targets, CWs still have 4 encounter power slots that can be slotted with AoE, plus 2 dailies that can be slotted for AoE, so you're back to the same problem of wanting multiple wizards for the AoE chain-pulling funfest that is the lolz-worthy dungeon delve.
the issue then becomes, pvp, which seems to be the basis for which every other change in this game is being considered, since pvpers tend to spend more RL cash, to the point where we're making an entire module for it. CW is already on the lower end of the pvp class tier hierarchy, only slightly above DC, which pretty much cant' do anything anymore. Further nerfs to damage abilities are just going to create a larger gap between CW and the rest of the pack, and will just cause more crying on the forums and more knee-jerk reactions to those complaints
so in my mind, there are 2 options
you either completely eliminate control wizards from the game, and make them into some other completely different class (which obviously isn't an option at all)
or
you put some measurable amount of effort into creating content that makes other classes desirable, which really, in the grand scheme of things, it NOT rocket science, and make class balance significantly easier to achieve without breaking everything fun about the game in the process
It still won't do that Spacejew.
Those other classes already do higher damage than the mage hands down. The mage will always rule in AoE based combat, the class was designed around it. No other class is capable of handling these dungeons at normal gear scores with the exception of the mage.
I'll illustrate it, lets say the mage does HALF the damage of a rogue in the standard 10 mob scenario you see in these dungeons. Lets say the mage does 50 damage and the rogue does 100 damage per target. Heck lets even say the Mobs only have 100 health just for simplicity. Here's how the scenario plays out in reality.
=======
Round 1.
Rogue: does 100 damage to one mob, killing it. Leaving 9 mobs.
Mage: Does 50 damage to all 10 mobs. Leaving 10 mobs at half health.
Monsters (For the sake of things both mage and rogue will have 220 health)
Mobs on Rogue: 9 hits for 20 damage each doing 180 damage to rogue. Leaving him with 40 health.
Mobs on Mage:: 10 hits for 20 damage each doing 200 damage to mage. Leaving him with 20 health.
======
Round 2:
Rogue does 100 damage to one mob killing it. Leaving 8 mobs
Mage does 50 damage to all 10 mobs killing them all. Leaving none left.
Monsters
Mobs on Rogue: 8 hits for 20 damage each, doing 160 damage, killing the rogue.
Mobs on Mage: 0 hits, they're all dead. The party moves on.
======
Paingiver pops up and shows...
Mage on top doing 1000 damage
Rogue doing 200 damage.
BUT... who was really doing more damage? The rogue or the mage?
Mage damage is already far below the other classes and has been for some time. That's why there's now problems in PvP with mages minus actual control powers as they were nerfed. Prior the Mage could use control powers with their lower single target damage and still win matchs. But with the control powers nerf in PvP, suddenly and mysteriously people discovered how low mage damage really is compared to everyone else's. And now you have an imbalance in PvP because they nerfed control powers.
This "mages do ungodly damage" was a farce in the first place, It never needed any "adjustments" because it was never overpowering in the first place, the Dungeons just made it look that way.
but that makes me wonder, why the hell people care so much about paingiver stat?
Well thank you,
And once you understand that AoE damage and Single target damage are used for two different purposes, you understand that NONE of the other Striker classes are ever going to be able to replace a mage in these types of dungeons and compete no matter what you do.
Right now, parties take TWO mages to clear a dungeon sucking up those extra spots other classes could be filling because two mages clear that entire dungeon much more efficiently than any other striker. After all, once you know the equation above... even if you nerfed mage damage down to 34 points of damage from 50 damage, they're just going to take a 3rd mage to clear the dungeons because its still going to be more effective and faster than that rogue. He's only going to be able to kill one mob at a time no matter what he does.
SO... the solution is the complete opposite. Its to increase mage damage to cover that single slot, so extra mages are rendered irrelevant. Basically you have to make the mage damage 100. Because the other striker classes are irrelevant anyway in an AoE environment no matter how you slice it. They are for boss mobs and elite mobs. The mage is for the mass mobs. No other class can replace that no matter how much damage they do.
I suggested doubling mage damage but increasing the timers by that much, this solves both the mage multiple slot issue, and the issue in PvP. So they can do enough damage that it doesn't take 2-3 of them in a party, but only a single one.
The only thing that remains is the illusion of Paingiver which was always just an illusion in the first place and bruised poor Striker's egos.
They've been doing the wrong direction on this one for a long long time and only making things worse and worse on other classes. Nerf Mages, you're not really nerfing them.... you're nerfing everyone else in PvE.
Patently untrue. Do the actual math instead of making up BS numbers and you'll see that a mages AoE is actually more damage than the single-target DPS of any class you care to make. This is because many of the CW powers, as you rightly point out, have no target cap and CW is able to stack a tremendous amount of mitigation debuff/damage buff to the powers that do (and don't) have caps. This is exactly what enables a CW team to pull virtually an entire dungeon at one time in comparative safety. Your suggestions make that playstyle easier and more profitable.
If you don't see that, it's probably because you're too busy complaining about PvP and you somehow don't see how fighting 5 guys who are virtually CC immune (With high armor versus your low/malfunctioning armor penetration) is clearly going to put you at the bottom of the pile. This was before tenacity nerfed CW's only defense. Giving you a 5 minute CD on every one of your DPS powers sounds like a real blast in PvP too if you're a voyeur style player. Tell me where that fits into a niche; or is this where you tell me CW is meant to nuke 5 players at once in PvP every few minutes?
These are mostly rhetorical questions; I do not give two flips about PvP 'balance' and apparently neither does Cryptic.
The mage, by your own admission. If the mage can floor ten add's in the time it takes a rogue to kill two...well are you really that bad at math? Dungeons are nothing except add's until you hit a boss, where it throws even more adds at you. (And the add's are virtually always the bigger threat regardless.)
Perhaps unsurprisingly, nuking a ton of add's on top of the bosses head also nukes the boss. So your 'single target' isn't ever needed when there are 3, 4, or 5 of the class that can floor a group of add's in one cast rotation. Bosses are not dangerous on their own as long you are aware of the fact you have a shift key that automagically negates any heavy attack the boss has.
The AoE is enough for all situations. This is generally acknowledged as true by pretty much the entire community and the developers themselves, or else you wouldn't see groups consistently clearing content with only one class. Go ahead and get on a Castle Never team, how many CW do you see? If you said 5, you win. (This is considering that post-nerf GWF isn't going to be finding a spot in most PvE teams. As of now I would readily admit that it's probably 3 CW and 2 GWF or 2xCW, 2xGWF, and 1 DC for training wheels.)
The issue with this statement is you appear ignorant of every dungeon in the game, and how they are all 100% add fests with virtually nothing that equates to what you would expect of an 'elite'. They all die the same, with most so-called 'Elites' not even being CC immune; and with CC immunity being only an all or nothing proposition.
So why is only one class based around fighting all those hundreds of add's?!?
IF CW did comparable damage to other classes, it would take about as much time for a rogue to kill a group with single-target as a mage would take to kill the whole group. That would be damage parity, and it is patently not present in Neverwinter in the current live version and that is not likely to change any time soon. (Nor should it.)
With CW always doing content faster, it's no surprise that people use the most efficient farming class to make AD the fastest. It directly correlates into a stronger character in a shorter time frame, with less real world money required.
There is no content where single-target damage is advantageous enough to warrant building a team around it, or even taking it along, outside of PvP. Know what happens when you bring non-GWF melee into a dungeon? Squish, mostly. Especially CN, but every dungeon makes it almost impossible to stay in melee range long enough to actually out DPS anything ranged.
PvP and PvE are entirely, and drastically, different things. CW is by general consensus the weakest PvP class, but that has a lot of causes that have nothing to do with PvE. By all means, suggest changes to fix that, but at least try not to make CW even more massively overpowered in PvE than it already is with those suggestions.
TL;DR
Pretending that feats/features/gear like Eye of the Storm, High Viziers, Malevolent Surge, Frozen Power Transfer, Transcended Master, Assailing Force, Evocation, and Nightmare Wizardry aren't some of the best PvE DPS increasing feats/features in the game isn't helping you out.
Name another class that gets so many flat percentage based increases that all stack? You can't, because none of them do. Even if the damage the powers themselves do in a direct comparison are lower, CW is capable of vastly higher heights of performance that increase proportionally to how many add's are present. That's the problem in a nutshell, and just raising damage and lowering cooldowns doesn't even come close to fixing that. It actually makes it worse.
I'm done arguing this point, as your position here is illogical in given PvE content in literally every way.
Huh?
Did you just argue with me and then turn around and directly prove all of my points (while simultaneously missing the point).... and then have the brass balls to claim I was wrong and "illogical"?
You basically admitted:
1. Single Target Damagers cannot compete in an AoE environment.
2. Mages are the only AoE class
3. Mages thereby are the only class capable of handling/controlling those adds through damage.
4. Single Target Damagers will never be able to match the overall damage... EVEN THOUGH they're doing more damage per target than the mage is currently.
5. Because of this, mages get stacked in parties over Single Target damagers because the Dungeons are AoE infested... where single target damagers are useless.
6. Multiple mages suck up extra spots in a party leaving other Strikers out of parties. Because they can't and never will be able to compete in a mass mob environment no matter what you do.
Did you or did you not just admit to that?
Basically All the points I just made... You agreed are true... and then... called me "illogical" for saying Nerfing mage damage doesn't do the Strikers any good because they're still useless in mass mob situations and just results in more mage stacking.
1. I stated... double mage damage... double the recast timers.
2. Reducing mage damage only makes people stack more mages to get through the content.
3. Mobs have limited numbers of Health.
4. Increasing mage damage to allow a single mage to take out the adds instead of multiple mages, will result in less need for more party slots taken by mages.
5. Increasing the damage to allow this, yet increasing the recast timers as well results in the same actual DPS... not more actual damage...
6. This means the mage will spend it all in one chunk to nuke the adds..... and WON'T be able to use sustained single target damage on the Boss Mobs and Elite mobs as he'll be waiting on recast timers...
7. Creating need for those Single Target damagers.... once again who can use sustained persistent single target damage on all the stronger mobs.
I thought that was pretty straight forward, and looks pretty logical to me.
you CAN'T do it by altering the class
short of removing the control wizard from the game entirely, there is no possible way to take a class where every single worthwhile ability is an AoE ability (on trash encounters) and make it balanced while you still have dungeons designed and optimized FOR AOE DAMAGE DEALING.
no amount of buffing/nerfing/balancing is going to fix a class in a broken system. Increasing cooldowns makes taking more CWs less a preference than a necessity. Nerfing damage does the same thing.
the ONLY solution to the problem is to address the source of every balance issue in this game when it comes to PvE, which is basic dungeon design.
let me be clear
silverquick, your ideas will not work. everything you've proposed simply makes 5 CW parties more necessary for speed clearing. If you give wizard AoE abilities MORE damage, even with longer cooldowns, the result will be to have MORE wizards in optimal parties to take advantage of that damage increase, casting spells in a rotation so that no mobs survive after all 5 CWs have cast a single rotation, and run on to the next mass AoE pull. Buffing anything on the current CW class build reduces the need for single target damage dealers, not the opposite. The simple fact remains: encounters designed for AoE will NEVER cater to striker classes unless those classes are given AoE abilities, or the encounters themselves are redesigned to make some small iota of sense for the class roles that are constantly talked about by developers, but seemingly never actually understood or implemented by those developers
if the devs are actually reading these posts, which they may, or may not be, stop giving them ridiculous feedback that is, if nothing else, counterproductive to truly balancing PvE combat in this game. spend your energy instead on considering what changes to current content might facilitate class balance with less actual work on the classes themselves.
you still have both PvE and PvP in this game, so with the current system, you're trying to balance classes so that they perform equally well in AoE-centric PvE encounters and single-target PvP encounters using the same skill sets, class mechanics, and feat builds
how can you possibly think there's a way to make that work?