It doesn’t sound like you appreciate the feedback at all, considering you made no changes and didn’t acknowledge any of the ideas. Instead of making 3 dps classes happy, you pissed off one class. You even left the cap of 5 spells in place, because apparently that’s how fast mages cast.
Basically this means triplicity adds about 3.5-4 spells worth of damage (before other calculations) whether you cast 1 spell per second or 2.
This ruins all complexity of rotation planning and almost makes triplicity not worth using.
To begin with, triplicity doesn’t add the full 66% dmg. For some reason, the extra 2 fireballs don’t get buffed by the true affinity fireball boost (nor do they activate it). So normal fireballs do 1.15 damage in a rotation, whereas triplicity adds .66 (I’ve seem this vary from .5-.66 for some reason even without using the fire buff). So at best, it’s an additional ~.55 of a fireball added.
Rotation theory until now had a number of considerations based on cast speed. I took many factors into account to decide when to cast each spell to maximize benefits. There were a number of key ideas:
- avoid using affliction during triplicity, because it isn’t duplicated
- get 2 weaknesses up from afflictions, which last 8 seconds each, right before starting triplicity to maximize its dmg
- avoid overlapping afflictions as much as possible while keeping 3 up as much as possible, even during triplicity
- empower as many afflictions as possible with a frost before it, to extend the duration
- cast as few frosts as possible only to proc tiles and extend triplicity
- keep maximum tile uptime, especially when casting afflictions and triplicity
These ideas led me to a strict set of spells to cast exactly the same for ideal damage. I varied this rotation with other mages in the party to avoid overstacking afflictions. The rotation has to be redesigned for different cast speeds.
Now, rotation theory should look something like this:
- use affliction during triplicity after the 5th spell because the damage increase from those spells is negligible
- get weaknesses up whenever you use affliction because triplicity doesn’t add anything
- just use afflictions at a regular interval because the rotation is the same throughout
- all afflictions get frost buffed because they are spread evenly
- cast few frosts regularly
Rotations using triplicity don’t have to care about where the afflictions go or how to optimize the triplicity uptime because only 5 spells need to be maximized. I can cast afflictions any time in my rotation except for in that 2.5 second period if I want. I don’t have to get 2 weaknesses up, I just need to constantly cast fires with afflictions every 5 seconds ish.
Triplicity already has a number of big drawbacks that are amplified now that it’s almost worthless. For starters, it costs 2 spells to activate. These spells are longer to draw than fires and frosts, so lets call it a cost of 3 fires.
Next, casting these spells drops tiles. Tiles come back after about 2 seconds of casting fire/frost in triplicity. That means that the first 4 spells in triplicity get no tiles, and only the 5th one is buffed. This also means that 1-2 of the buffed spells have to be frost.
Triplicity also requires its own tiles, because it uses a different timing. This is part of why it takes a little time to activate them. However, this means that there are only 2 slots for fire/frost triplicity tiles. To get 3 tiles up, we have to cast frost twice. This was ok when triplicity gave a buff enough to make up for the downside, but now it means that choosing to use triplicity either limits you to 0 tiles up for 2 seconds then 2 tiles up for 6, or to 0 tiles up for 2 seconds then a new rotation of casting twice as many frosts as normal. The first scenario is easier to calculate and should be higher damaging, so I’ll use that for now.
Triplicity gains at best 4 fires worth of damage. Then, the lack of tiles on the first 2-3 spells takes away 30% from the first fire, 30% from the first frost, and 20% from the next fire. Then, all spells for the next 8 seconds lose 10% from only 2 tiles up. Trip dmg then looks like this, excluding afflictions for simplicity:
1.55/1.3+(1.55x.6)/1.3+1.55/1.2+1.55/1.1+1.55/1.1+1.27/1.1+1.14/1.1+(1.1x.6)/1.1+1.07/1.1+1.07/1.1+1.07/1.1+1.07/1.1+(1.07x.6)/1.1+1.07/1.1+1.07/1.1+1.07/1.1=16.2
Not using trip looks like this:
1x16+1x0.6x3=17.8
17.8>16.2 with a cast speed of 2 spells per second, which is faster than 98% of mages. Slower casters lose more damage because it takes longer for them to proc tiles.
Triplicity does less damage than not using it.
These considerations alone make you significantly better off not using triplicity at all. This doesn’t account for the afflictions also getting less tiles during triplicity. By choosing to not use triplicity, I also free up 2 tile slots on my armor and don’t have to learn 2 extra spells (res,+ poly). I also don’t lag the party and myself out with all the extra (worthless) spells.
Now my rotation can be explained in one sentence:
Fire spam, frost every 3 seconds, affliction every 5 seconds. That’s it.
You took the most complex class, severely punished the players who put the most playtime into the class and your game, and replaced it with a braindead rotation that doesn’t require any planning/discipline, and is summarized in one sentence instead of a paragraph. However you change the scaling, you’re still taking the most customizable rotation design and making it not matter because triplicity no longer has to be planned around. When triplicity is an important, untouchable damage phase, rotation design is very complex. That’s not going to be the case however you frame diminishing returns.
Thanks riley.
Edit: I want to make something clear.
I don’t play orbus because of how fun grinding is, or how cool the dungeons are, or how hard raids are. I’ve cleared every challenge the game has offered many many times. I don’t need better gear, I don’t need rare drops, I don’t need to unlock lore, and I don’t need to keep improving to beat hard opponents. However, I’ve played orbus for as long as I have because of mage. 99% of my playtime is in mage, even though I also tank and heal when necessary. I play orbus just to get better at mage.
This change, destroying the most complex part of the class and normalizing me to less skilled mages, feels like a big fat middle finger to all the effort I’ve put into the only meaningful (to me) part of the game.
