Post#24 » Tue Jul 31, 2018 10:29 pm
Alright, so we did have a bit of a discussion among us and came to the conclusion that we really like the idea of the ability you had in mind, Aza. It's solid, useful, reinforces an interesting niche with making things harder for two of the three healing classes and has real potential to push DPS AM into viability.
After discussing, we think that 3s cast seems like it'll be too long to be useful. Shadow Warrior's Festering Arrow is a great example of this, and they even have a small boost to the range of this ability to make it easier to land, so we think that 2s would likely be reasonable. The range should most likely be 100 ft and it seems that an ability like this would necessitate some form of cooldown. Anywhere between 5s and 10s, depending on if you would want it to have powerful synergy with Swordmaster's Whispering Wind or not. It seems reasonable that the baseline damage of this ability should be higher than a basic radiant lance as it is 13 points high in the tree, although it's difficult to say by what amount. This would make this ability flexible and useful outside of just targeting enemies with blessings on them and also justify the cooldown a little more.
With this, the DPS AM rotation is enriched as you now have more options on how to deal damage. Maximum range damage dealing and burst has been increased, because you have an additional ability to use at 100 ft which, if I didn't misinterpret what was said earlier, will have a fly speed that will allow it to reach its target at the same time as Radiant Lance if cast one after the other. One the other hand, it's likely that when the DPS AM is at 65 feet, this ability will simply replace Radiant Lance as there will very rarely be an opportunity to cast two 2s cast abilities back to back before using a Fury of Asuryan into Searing Touch, and that's fine, honestly, as long as the ability is more powerful than a basic radiant lance, it's still an upgrade, and even when that isn't the case, should a DPS AM be provided the opportunity, the aforementioned slower fly speed will result in a rather sizeable portion of burst damage, much more dangerous than before, yet also longer to execute.
One nuance to take into account is the Dispell Magic tactic as said previously. If there are plans to implement a 15 point aoe ability, it is still a worthwhile tactic to have as it will have use in the form of synergy with the potential DPS AM/Sham aoe ability. However, if DPS AM/Sham will henceforth only have single target damage, it'll likely become an obsolete tactic. If changing it to something more useful would not be too much to ask for with all these changes, then we do have two possible suggestions that everyone seemed to agree with on some level. We're not entirely sure how these changes would effect the balance, but I thought it'd be best to simply mention them regardless.
The favorite replacement of everyone for Dispell Magic was a tactic that would decrease the channel time of Searing Touch/Bunch of Waagh from 6s to 4s, effectively making the damage ticks 30% faster. In my personal opinion, this is probably the more reasonable suggestion as it does not add to the immediate burst potential of the AM, but does increase the potential for his follow up damage to score a kill.
Failing that, something as simple as a mirror to true caster's +intellect tactic was also mentioned. A lot more simple and rough, of course. Not sure if this would break something or not personally, but we all agree that it would at least be beneficial for sure.
Of course, if either of these prove problematic and overtune DPS AM in some fashion, we simply hope that the tactic will be switched out for something useful and balanced at the same time according to your own thoughts and designs.
Cheers ^^
Giladar - rr 80 DPS AM
This isn't some definitive decision making group, just a group of players that really wants to get this change to our favorite class right. We come up with suggestions and then I post them, and you're obviously invited to do the same, as that's the purpose of this thread.
