I agree… I like having lots of choices. Atm on ranger you only get one choice:precision or rapidity. Everything else in the tree is the same and mandatory for both. You might as well only have the one choice at Lvl 5.
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that’s assuming the dungeons you visit allow you to stand back far enough to use your talents, AND not get kicked for being out of the ‘spot’ with the heal well
Sure, the point still stands though. Rangers have a maximum of one possible choice that isnt forced on them.
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Musketeers have it worse… the dps line doesn’t do enough dps to even make it viable. There’s literally one option period.
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Before this update, affinity wasn’t actually a bad choice for mage. While True Affliction (TA) granted good single target DPS and excellent utility/multi target DPS, Affinity (AFF) granted better single target DPS and some utility. Most people used TA because it was a more versatile ability, stronger all around, and was more fun. I want to emphasize how much fun DOT spreading is. One of the biggest concerns about level scaling that I see mentioned is the power fantasy. DOT spreading is the same for mages. Of course, that doesn’t mean TA wasn’t overpowered. But AFF had good single target DPS that wasn’t really recognized. Especially in a party setting, having mages on AFF significantly decreases TTK. It was so rarely used because people don’t like switching abilities for every fight, which is what this update makes us do, and because TA’s single target damage was close enough to AFF’s single target damage while TA had other powerful abilities. To create a balanced system that doesn’t require talent switching, both talents should have relatively similar single target DPS and utility/multi target abilities.
With this update, TA is absolutely garbage.
Here’s a demo of single target damage from TA and from having no level 20 talent. It’s hardly even comparable. AFF adds more buffs to significantly increase damage from the level of having no talent, so you can imagine the difference between a TA mage and an AFF mage in any boss fight.
I used a basic calculation (rotating fire/frost spells at an inputted casting speed) to compare damage including DOTs for no talent and TA. The damages I inputted are estimated averages from casting repeatedly in game. As casting speed increases, the difference becomes more pronounced (more damage comes from the spell itself rather than the DOT tick when the spell damage comes faster). The DPS dropoff at 1 spell per second is actually an interesting phenomenon that reduces the damage of faster mages and has been in Orbus since TA came out. Each fire/frost DOT ticks for the first time one second after it’s applied. If you cast 2 fireballs faster than a second each, the DOT hasn’t ticked by the time the second fireball hits. The DOT is then erased and replaced with a new DOT that takes another second to kick in. In a normal rotation of alternating fire and frosts, each fire/frost DOT is reset after ticking once.
In old Orbus, a few faster mages had to deal with this reduced damage. Now that spellcasting is a little faster, I expect more people to notice the problem. This is where TA does less damage than otherwise expected and AFF already outpaces it.
It’s easy to see that the DOT never ticks when you cast more than 1 spell per second.
TA single target damgage is a fraction of non talent damage, let alone damage boosted by AFF. The problem becomes worse the faster you cast (DOTs being reapplied and only ticking half as often + the damage curve after TA makes more damage comes from the DOT). Bringing a TA mage to a boss fight is like carrying level 18’s through shards. Casual players who don’t want to switch talents for every fight will just elect to use AFF by default.
Some of the nerfs on multi target damage are pretty pointless too.
- In almost all dungeon scenarios, the party will never fight more than 5 enemies at a time. Reducing the number of targets hit by DOT spread to 5 does almost nothing to the practical power of TA; it only kills the fun aspect of the talent (i.e. killing all the adds after killing boss 2 or soul keeper).
- Beforehand, a party could bring 1 mage and DOT spread sufficiently. Adding extra mages had diminishing returns because of the 3 affliction max, which is where most of the TA damage comes from. Now, if a party wants to properly DOT spread they have to bring 3 good mages to get the same 3 afflictions applied. By making the individual mage less powerful, you’re just encouraging parties to run 3/5 of their members as experienced mages.
This just takes away from the fun of the mage class.
I think there’s a better approach to balancing mage. As is, the class is segmented into one talent with abyssmal single target DPS but good utility/multi target DPS and one with great single target DPS but ok utility/multi target DPS. Instead, each talent should have its own merits in both single target DPS and utility/multi target DPS. This can be done by reducing the utility/multi target DPS of TA, increasing the utility/multi target DPS of AFF, or both (relative to how mage was in old orbus, not with this update) (while keeping single target damages comparable!).
- One option is to reduce the damage of the fire/frost DOT from TA, rather than the spell damage itself. Unlike the current reduction in spell damage, this doesn’t excessively punish faster mages AND nerfs DOT spreading.
- Another is to reduce the damage of each DOT that is spread by TA instead of directly applied. DOTs spread onto targets could do 50% of the damage they would on a single target, for example. If one mage could apply 3 weakened afflictions, then DOT spreading would be nerfed drastically and parties wouldn’t have to run 3/5 mages in order to get maximum damage on crowds (3 mages for 3 afflictions currently). I think this is the best approach to nerfing TA.
- Alternatively, you could reduce TA spell damage by a much less significant amount (i.e. the new damage could be old damage - one tick of DOT damage). Because single targets would still be hit with a DOT + a spell, single target damage would be much more similar. However, this approach still punishes faster mages (more of their damage comes from spell damage instead of DOT damage) and doesn’t really nerf DOT spreading much on its own.
The utility of AFF could be increased too, to make the class closer to TA without killing either class’ single target DPS.
- You can increase the slow effects from AFF frosts.
- You can increase the length of stun effects from AFF pushbacks.
- You can make AFF pushback 2 a projectile AOE, rather than one centered on the player.
- Instead of spreading DOTs, AOEs from AFF mages could spread debuffs (i.e. mage weakness and slows).
All of these approaches give AFF mages utility against crowds without making the talent overpowered at wiping them out. They should go along with some sort of nerf to DOT spread damage from TA.
Optimally, TA and AFF can both grant similar single target DPS and have extra utility/crowd control/multi target DPS in their own way. Each talent would then have its own specialization (in the utilities, and maybe slightly higher single target DPS for AFF), but both could be used in any dungeon/raid scenario. Mages won’t have to select AFF to be included in boss kill groups.
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Thanks for taking the time to sit down and run all these numbers, it’s always nice to get more data to work with.
The replacing DoTs before they tick is not intended and we will fix that as a bug, which should help (although by no means is that going to fully solve the problem).
I will read through the rest of this when I have more time as I am at the end of the day right now and stepping away, but in general my note would be, Affinity is going to do more damage on single-target situations than Affliction, that’s the point of the talent. Affliction is going to do more damage on groups of mobs. So we will get some bugs fixed and maybe do some balancing to bring Affliction closer to where it should be on single target, by no means should it be that far off, but it’s not going to be the same.
Also, it’s too bad the original game has already shut down, because I would have loved to see this type of data for how overpowered Affliction was before.
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The way wow dealt with dot refreshes like this was that they would stack to some extent such that it always dealt the full dot damage even when it reset the timer. I dont remember the specifics of how it worked, but obviously any situation where casting slower deals more dps is bad.
a bunch of wierd things have been happening ever since the patch. The chaos orb appears as a nature bolt when shot, and vice versa, with a bit of both affects mangled together, and possibly are doing double damage. This is also the case for the death burst of the lich king which causes massive lag as soon as it is done, making it very difficult to dodge. also for paladin it feels like the agro gen was reduced, and whenever the hammer is thrown it is no longer interacting with world objects, and just goes through the floor
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Please tell me this wasn’t also intended but not included in the changelog.
It definitely was not reduced. We are aware of the projectile thing it’s just a display bug and will be fixed in the next patch.
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Since last patch every player’s attack is invisible. We just did a battleground and everyone dies whitout seeing what hit them
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Darn I thought that was an advanced mechanic where we as players would have to deal with. Lame that it was a bug 
bring back pincones in reborn
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I don’t have data, but I do have a shard level 10 rainforest video with 3 min-maxed affliction rune mages (the record time). Shared in PM 
Not just the Runemage “firing into the ground” bug, but you’re seeing no VFX at all?
yes no arrows, spells, or bullets could be seen coming from anyone, not even into the ground. the only way you could tell someone was casting spells or shooting a gun was by the movement of the gun/wand in their hand, and the subsequent lost health
sometimes this could be fixed for a short period of time by relogging
I’ve seen this also. If you re log the spells will show up(mine still cast in floor RIP) but after a few minutes they just disappear entirely.
no one can see anyone attack and not hear it too like the bard cant hear it
Messed up visual (and audio) things with the update (And things we should be able to see):
-No Bard notes can be heard
-No mage spells can be seen
-We were also unable to see scoundrel and ranger shots (though this may be fixed)
-We should be able to see shaman orbs
-We should be able to see paladin hammer throw (and bard baton throw, but definitely less of a problem)
-All mob projectiles looked like nature bolts
May have left something out, but this is what I came up with.