[PTS] Combustion & Dark magic

[Hellforce]

This feedback is in regards to the Testserver changes to Sorc & Brightwizaard

Patchnote:
https://i.imgur.com/qAsgRWK.png

First of all, I do have to question the timing.
As far as I understand on the roadmap, we are still waiting or in the "healer phase" So why is this change happening to a class mechanic that has been the same since something like Age of Reckoning Beta state? No new gear has come out to adjust these two classes in years to adjust their powerspikes. And after the Ability rework patch on RoR, there were not much changes happening to these two classes as they were some of the least affected over the years of RoR.
So again, Why now?

Naturally the reason why I am questioning the timing, is because I am running a guild focused on stacking Brightwizards. Not because we deemed it to be strong, overtuned, overpowered, outperforming. But because it was decent, suboptimal but functional. Seen in contrast to meta warband setups and groups.

Second of all, why the class mechanic. Something that affects all areas of the game. Now my gunbad performance will be lower, bu-hu But in all seriousness this will affect all playstyles of these classes. In all aspects of the game.
- T1
- Midtier
- T4
- Bis
- Groupplay
- Solo
- Largescale
- Pve

Are these classes, in all aspects of the game overperforming that a blanket nerf is required?
If something about the builds for the playstyles is overperforming then tune THAT
Is WoP/BB scaling too much, reduce it.
Is Tickrate of channels too frequent, adjust it.
Are proc rates still a nightmare, keep adjusting it (sigh)
Is Resistance maybe the real issue, address it then!

Touching the classmechanic will affect, everything these classes do!

If I am to compare my main toons on both sides here is how I would personally describe them based on what they bring for me:

Utility + CC damagedealers
- My RR 80 monstro mara brings fantastic control with interupt, WS/init debuff DoT, a semi sustain defensive proc, singletarget crowdcontrol and playmaking, Aoe knockdown, morale block/drain, all on top of somewhat decent aoe damage and singletarget executes while being a MDPS with mobility in snarebreaker + Charge.

- My RR 85 Bis MSH brings alot of mitigation for himself, strong aoe cc with Outtamyway & Kaboom, a strong cooldown increaser debuff. A singletarget channeled lifesteal and pretty fantastic Morale options both offensively and defensively from technically being a ranged archtype. Mobility from a pounce and selfpunt. Decent aoe damage, which is fine because of the full package

My classcanon damagedealers:
- My Choppa with bis 10k ring brings some partybuffs in attackspeed. A strong singletarget healdebuff with low CD, strong debuff in Drop Da Basha to debuff a guarding tank. Some weaker aoe control with Choppapull. Optional knockdown and anticrit output from ragedump moves. And mobility of a standard MDPS with Charge and Snarebreaker.

- My Slayer with bis 10k ring bring some AP pump party buff, Strong cooldown increaser debuff, strong singletarget healdebuff with low cooldown, strong debuff in Numbing strike to debuf a guarding tank. Optional knockdown and anticrit output from ragedump moves. And mobility of a standard MDPS with Charge and Snarebreaker.

The point I am trying to illustrate here is that other damagedealing classes have eiterh some or all of the following categories: Sustain, control, mitigation, mobility. Where as Sorc and BW are fairly limmited. These mages are hyper offensive classes with damage proc groupbuffs, SOME control in Sorc's dissarm, BWs singletarget knockdown, 24sec healdebuff in singletarget, and an aoe punt in BW closerange spec(??) on top of a range 20ft aoe silence plus 4person root.

The point being, BW and Sorc are offensive damagedealers with argubly limmited utility, mobility, mitigation and sustain.
If my MSH could bring all of the advantages and compete with my Sorc in damage, it wouldnt be balanced. The pure damagedealing carrers needs to have an offensive advantage in output when they dont have the other categories imho.

So we want to test how lowering the critical damage of Sorc & Brightwizard will turn out. Well here is my thrid question, what alternatives do these two classes have apart from building hyper offensive critbuilds(?)
We dont have a secondary mainstat to spec into like psyical damagedealers have weaponskill, we dont have Resist penetration to make a nonecrit build or main-stat build. We have our critchance, and our abilities are dealing somewhat pityful damage when we are not criting on our targets.

So the different builds are all getting affected, lets have a look.
Singletarget "timestamp" is based around fitting as much damage into a short burst window. What happends when the damage is not high enough, then the build falls apart. You only have so many ability to fit into that short burst frame before you are out of abilities off cooldown. If the timestamp isnt enough pressure then the build falls flat. And the alternatives for smallscale? None.

As for Aoe "bombing" we are mage clothusing career walking up near enemies and unloading stationary channeled abilities, dealing with stacks of Hold the line, challenges and interupt just like everyone else. We dont have a snarebreaker outside of M2 Focused mine, we dont have a charge to repossiton despite needing the most possitional awareness to both keep up, and stay alive in closerange. Our damage is heavily carried by procs for ourselves, the group and carried pretty much by us dealing magical damage into a 40%soft resistcap. Again, our damage is pityful when we dont crit and build alternatives; none.

Right now in BiS mage gear I already have to go hyper offensive to bring respectable damage, as I dont bring anything other than Damage (kinda). I have 2k armor, I cant move while channeling and im dealing with 3 stacks of hold the line in RvR. If the class mechanic is getting flat nerfed there are no more offensive sources to tap into, no more bonus Int to stack as we have been softcapped since Conq gear. No more magicpower to lean further into and give up some defensive stats, we dont have acces to any more. We are pretty much hardcapped with current output in available Realmskillpoints and gear.

And this is happening, now??
The only thing that has changed to Brightwizard and Sorc, was when Ability rework was done and proc internalcooldowns and values were being touched. And as a result players started stacking mages one per group in warbands. And the careers as a whole are getting blanket nerfed in T1, Pve, Scenario play, Warband warfare after 15years of staying the same as a result? In 2020 when I do most of my citysieges noone really care about if I were in their group to give them proc bufs, I was just a career who could dash out top offensive damage pressure, back then it was not uncomon to see crits against organized groups not much higher than 400 on annihilate/DC. You are telling me the same careers which hasnt been touched, is suddenly suppoed to be blanket nerfed after all this time and no changes.

Speculative: Is this nerf coming now, because of the Order side is maybe gettin an Elemental debuff, that would be such an overreaction to nerf Destro sorc as a result. or touching the Singletarget builds also as they are not affected. Everything about this change is just one big questionmark to me, especially the timing

Over the years of RoR ive done selfreports of stuff I found and it was broken and could had abused myself, but i reported it instead because the game should be fair and fun and working as intented. Such as:
- snapshotting bonusdmg in ASW / Squigarmor stance to run with both warlord + sove bonuses at once
- BW m2 morale range not reduced to 25ft
- several BW could buff Flames of Rhuin and they would each stack and proc.

Im fine with nerfs, as long as there are alternatives. Currently there are no more offensive sources to tap into to make up for a blanket nerf, there are no alternatives in builds for either Timestamp or Bombing. We already have capped int, we have max critchance because that is all we can spec into offensively, and if we fall to the same level as damagedealers who has more mobility, sustain, control, mitigation then why play these two careers.

I totally agree with all you said...Punishing a class that has almost zero defensive tools is a big mistake!!! The BIS Sorcs-BWs we will lose damage but I cant even imagine a new player or any player trying to level up a character (sorc-BW) that dies even if an enemy breathes next to him and dont have something to get back for that which until now was the big damage the character would do!!! What will be the reason anymore for someone to level up these two classes??

[germ32]

No offense but this just seems like very conveniently selected anecdotal evidence that happens to support your argument. There are probably plenty of city instances other than this where bws and sorcs have dominated in damage and death blows

None taken.
I just clicked on the frontpage of recent cities.
I did probably close to 70 city instances when they released, the gear and the classes didnt really change since then. and my point being, a class that only brings damage, should outdamage the damagedealers who are bringing more control, utility and have more well rounded tools. Othervice we would only play Mara and WL right.

The point is, nothing has changed on these classes to justify a blanket nerf. if something is overperforming in either of the builds, then adjust that. Dont do blanket nerfs, especially not when nothing has changed and people are not even talking about the classes as in a powerful position.

IF the fear is that BW will become too powerful with elemental debuff, well then dont add the elemental debuff. and why is sorc getting punished lol

I see your point but would also argue that a lot of the other dps classes you are referring to that have more utility would trade some of this utility to deal more damage? I cant really think of any utility that a dps class brings to the table which a tank/healer doesn't already fulfill other than like shattered limbs or GTDC. At the end of the day what matters for dps classes is how much damage they deal IMO, and very often dealing more damage can greatly outmatch any of this utility.

I'm very much of the opinion that combustion / dark magic has always been too strong even on live, and I've griped about it since before magus and engi had their % damage and range buff added as a class mechanic so I'm happy to see this finally happen

[wonshot]

I see your point but would also argue that a lot of the other dps classes you are referring to that have more utility would trade some of this utility to deal more damage? I cant really think of any utility that a dps class brings to the table which a tank/healer doesn't already fulfill other than like shattered limbs or GTDC. At the end of the day what matters for dps classes is how much damage they deal IMO

A reference point id like to make to that is the "zerodpsbuild" from Hack and Slash games.
The concept is that you bring a character that deals zero dps, but it brings enough buffs, amplifiers and debuffs that it makes up for the spot by buffing others instead of bringing more damage itself.

A raw example:
3player group
Player1 deals 100dps
Player2 deals 100dps
Player3 deals 100dps

For it to be worth it to bring a zerodps you need to outwieght the damage you are losing by not bringing damage yourself, with the utility you are bring.

Player1 deals 100dps
Player2 deals 100dps
Player3 deals 0 dps but gives double damage to allied players (200dps, 200dps, 0dps)

Some of the same concepts ive used previous when building warbands on RoR.
By Bringing a control engineer focused on aoe knockdown, pull, sove snare, landmine. You give up a damageslot from a pure-breed dps but instead the knockdown and control of the backline healers give uptime for your other 7 dps in the warband to easier setup kills during the control window.
Same on destro when we ran a dps zealot with Zomega, his aoe armor debuff + corp debuff on demand costed us a Choppa/sorc/mara spot and his dmg couldnt keep up with a purebreed dps, but his debuffs made all Jagged Edge corp, all of our phyical damage reach higher numbers to argubly making it worth slotting a debuffer utility instead of a purebreed dps.

Same for when we are running our Empire warband these days, we are giving up on not having Whitelions to aoe interupt incoming channels. We have no SM with Rakin Talon stacking on top of Challenge + Guard for mitigation. All we have is damage, thats a choice, we are fine with that choice. Same reason I want to run one defensive Sove BW for the snareproc to give us some utility, at the cost of some offensive punch.

I ran a test on the sovereign dummy on live server. Tried to stay on same damagebonus almost and removed the 15%critdmg bonuse on Sove gear and 4piece proc 130 int:
570 ish annihilate crits on sove dummy without 15%critbonus on sove. 223 bonus dmg
646crits ish annihilate crits on sove dummy with 15%critbonus on sove 227 bonus dmg
These numbers are in BiS offensive glasscanon gear before resist buf/debuff, toughness, Challenge debuff and Guard.

Maybe the easier option would be the change the sove bonuse, if BIS mages are the issue and leave the Midtier guy leveling a mage alone

If something lately has changed to Sorc/BW that the class mechanic became overtuned in contrast to last 15years, the only thing I can think of is when SM got stronger all-resist debuff proc than Knight allresist-debuff aura. If that is the case, how about we adress that situation seperately instead of blanket nerfing and changest all the symptoms happening as a result of Ability rework patch, which didnt change anything but the proc rate and internal cooldown on the party buffs.

[germ32]

If something lately has changed to Sorc/BW that the class mechanic became overtuned in contrast to last 15years, the only thing I can think of is when SM got stronger all-resist debuff proc than Knight allresist-debuff aura. If that is the case, how about we adress that situation seperately instead of blanket nerfing and changest all the symptoms happening as a result of Ability rework patch, which didnt change anything but the proc rate and internal cooldown on the party buffs.

I respect your opinion and I think maybe we just disagree, my take is just that dark magic and combustion have always been op and they scale very well with gear. WBs will still be bringing sorcs and bws even after this change.

Other dps classes have to spec into and also slot a tactic for bonus crit damage, and I don't think the risk/reward tradeoff is nearly risky enough in group play to warrant 100% bonus crit damage.

[Caduceus]

Sorc/BW is a high risk, high reward type class.

It's difficult to play due to its lack of control and escape tools, cloth armor class and self-nuking mechanic, and it heavily relies on its party.

What's the point of playing Sorc/BW if you cannot enjoy a powerful caster when you tick all the boxes? That's literally the entire point of committing to a class like this.

Today, it is a high risk, no reward type class, and in every department it is outshined by other classes.

This nerf, in conjunction with various other nerfs to the class, just shows how disconnected the devs are, trapped in their stats/math bubble and showing little to no intuitive understanding of game design.

[what63]

No offense but this just seems like very conveniently selected anecdotal evidence that happens to support your argument. There are probably plenty of city instances other than this where bws and sorcs have dominated in damage and death blows

None taken.
I just clicked on the frontpage of recent cities.
I did probably close to 70 city instances when they released, the gear and the classes didnt really change since then. and my point being, a class that only brings damage, should outdamage the damagedealers who are bringing more control, utility and have more well rounded tools. Othervice we would only play Mara and WL right.

The point is, nothing has changed on these classes to justify a blanket nerf. if something is overperforming in either of the builds, then adjust that. Dont do blanket nerfs, especially not when nothing has changed and people are not even talking about the classes as in a powerful position.

IF the fear is that BW will become too powerful with elemental debuff, well then dont add the elemental debuff. and why is sorc getting punished lol

I see your point but would also argue that a lot of the other dps classes you are referring to that have more utility would trade some of this utility to deal more damage? I cant really think of any utility that a dps class brings to the table which a tank/healer doesn't already fulfill other than like shattered limbs or GTDC. At the end of the day what matters for dps classes is how much damage they deal IMO, and very often dealing more damage can greatly outmatch any of this utility.

I'm very much of the opinion that combustion / dark magic has always been too strong even on live, and I've griped about it since before magus and engi had their % damage and range buff added as a class mechanic so I'm happy to see this finally happen

This is largely because the changes you speak of already happened. Not many years ago, SL, Choppa, Engi/Magus, zDPS zeal/RP and Mara all had solid slots in WB as UTILITY picks, at one point even WH/WE did, despite being on the somewhat lower end of the damage spectrum. You had things like 1-3-2 parties on destro with one choppa providing CF for two sorcs that were ranged bombing with IW. You could build marauder to take out massive chunks of enemy AP and morale, to the point where you technically defaulted engagements with morales if you stacked enough of them. Ranged squig provided Shatter Limbs. SL had 1-2 spots no matter what because of Shatter Limbs. Things were somewhat bleaker on the order side of things due to just how good BWs were with old Flashfire, but you still took utility picks because they provided more overall damage, but especially so on the destro side.

Someone didn't enjoy this however and decided to make everything all about raw deeps and mobility, with some minor utility just sprinkled on top for taste more than anything. It didn't lead to a better game state, now everyone is just crying for more damage, everyone deals more damage with less synergy needed, the tools to deal with high damage are worse, and the list could go and on, but end of the day, suffice to say the gamestate has deteriorated significantly from when an optimized warband included multiple utility picks.

Anyways, as far as combustion goes, the major point there is that a ST rotation for example simply doesn't compute with enough non-crits. The kit and its numbers was built around having the crit damage there, it wasn't just added on top of a normal kit.

[germ32]

Sorc/BW is a high risk, high reward type class.

It's difficult to play due to its lack of control and escape tools, cloth armor class and self-nuking mechanic, and it heavily relies on its party.

Today, it is a high risk, no reward type class, and in every department it is outshined by other classes.

Not to be rude, I really just don't believe this is true. A pink pot easily counteracts self damage, and if you play in a group it is easily healed through. Sorcs and bws have some of the highest ST burst due to how many time stamps they can stack and how high they can crit. They have disarm, root and detaunt (bws have kd) which is more than enough to survive imo

[Caduceus]

Not to be rude, I really just don't believe this is true. A pink pot easily counteracts self damage, and if you play in a group it is easily healed through. Sorcs and bws have some of the highest ST burst due to how many time stamps they can stack and how high they can crit. They have disarm, root and detaunt (bws have kd) which is more than enough to survive imo

The damage Sorc/BW does to itself is essentially a continual morale bombing.

750 per tick, piercing every type of resistance including detaunt and guard, and possibly proccing every GCD with no internal CD.

Proccing this 3-4 times in a row is nothing rare - producing 2k+ morale damage, we're talking about M4 levels of morale bombing here.

"It's easily healed through" is just not a serious argument. Having to morale bomb yourself in order to do any kind of damage is obviously a huge drawback.

[Zxul]

Sorc/BW is a high risk, high reward type class.

It's difficult to play due to its lack of control and escape tools, cloth armor class and self-nuking mechanic, and it heavily relies on its party.

Today, it is a high risk, no reward type class, and in every department it is outshined by other classes.

Not to be rude, I really just don't believe this is true. A pink pot easily counteracts self damage, and if you play in a group it is easily healed through. Sorcs and bws have some of the highest ST burst due to how many time stamps they can stack and how high they can crit. They have disarm, root and detaunt (bws have kd) which is more than enough to survive imo

Not playing sorc actively, but tell you what. Come to arena as bw/sorc, I will come on one of my roaming toons, see how you manage. Because in my entire live and ror history, the only time when bws survived is when they run to wc/keep in time.

And as for party support, guard and heal or not it is still a 2 k including pot armor toon, with a single target detaunt, and root which any melee can instantly break. If a competent mdps get to bw/sorc, he doesn't survives.

Not to mention, several abilities in that timestampted burst require standing still (sorc Arctic Blast for example). GL being able to freecast most of the time.

[germ32]

Not to be rude, I really just don't believe this is true. A pink pot easily counteracts self damage, and if you play in a group it is easily healed through. Sorcs and bws have some of the highest ST burst due to how many time stamps they can stack and how high they can crit. They have disarm, root and detaunt (bws have kd) which is more than enough to survive imo

The damage Sorc/BW does to itself is essentially a continual morale bombing.

750 per tick, piercing every type of resistance including detaunt and guard, and possibly proccing every GCD with no internal CD.

Proccing this 3-4 times in a row is nothing rare - producing 2k+ morale damage, we're talking about M4 levels of morale bombing here.

"It's easily healed through" is just not a serious argument. Having to morale bomb yourself in order to do any kind of damage is obviously a huge drawback.

I don't particularly like probability, but the situation you are describing has a 4.2% chance of occurring (.35 x .35 x .35) at 100 combustion. So yea that is bad luck but honestly I don't think it is an unreasonable claim I am making. I have played the class believe me and I've never had a problem with killing myself.