Hello All,

I have a concern about the balanced between the offensive fighter and caster output damage.

In my experience, it seems caster output twice the damage of the offensive fighter.

I open a debate on Ten Ton Hammer:
http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=13662

I had done it there, because their web site have a good amount of players of any classes.  And it is a class debate and I think you should consider giving a try, or express yourself... or anything you think usefull.

Perhaps, I miss something and my perception are invalid.  In any case, I trust you to give your perception about that issue in vanguard.

Jourdelune

Offensive casters should always do more damage than offensive fighters.  The balance in this is that casters wear cloth and can't take nearly so many hits as offensive fighters can.  They are the true "glass cannons."  They do a ton of damage, but they can't take the hits that we can when we draw aggro.  It's just the way light fighters and cloth casters always work.

Light fighers have slightly more armor, but are always in the brunt of the battle affected by cleaves and aoe's (excluding rangers). Arcane can do their damage from outside of mob AoE range etc. which should be considered. I think they should be just about on par for dps, def agree with QTM's outlook, eventually casters will run out of energy.

While this is true, I think things are still a bit off balance.  Caster DPS is more burst oriented than melee ability damage.  Once their energy bar is depleted, it regenerates much slower in-combat than our endurance bar does.  Since solo effectiveness is often used to benchmark a classes usefulness and survivability, it would appear that the offensive fighter gets the shaft.  While we struggle to take down a blue/green 3 dot, casters mow through even 3 dots with little difficulty.  But this comes at a price:  Toe to toe, that caster would not survive the encounter.

To me, it comes down to this:

Offensive Caster Pros:

+ Very high burst DPS
+ Damage can be done at any range
+ Very effective at range while energy pool lasts

Offensive Caster cons:

- DPS not sustainable due to energy regeneration rate.
- Low melee survivability.
- Easy to take agro if hate is not properly managed


Offensive Fighter Pros:

+ Moderate sustained DPS
+ Fast endurance regeneration
+ Moderate survivability
+ Very effective while health pool lasts

Offensive Fighter Cons:

- Damage must be done within melee range
- Low burst DPS

We obviously need a bump in the sustained DPS department.  If casters are doing all their damage in burst, then we need to do ours over time.  As it stands, offensive casters blow us away as long as they can stay out of melee range of their targets.  But as encounters become longer, we should beat them hands down.  We should not be seeing parses where burst DPS wins in all scenarios.

For me personally - I could care less if casters and healers can take out 2 or 3 dot solo fodder faster or more effectively than I can.  I just want to have a meaningful purpose in a group or raid encounter.

 

Really nice write up.

I wish to see those kind of post on TTH.  The thread over there is full of : Give me numbers.  It is just an opinion... and caster defending their point.

So,  it is a bit futile to do a nice discussion over there with people like you to express the concern.

I don't want a bad balance between the 8 DPS classes we have when forming a group.  I want to be sure that having a monk with me, will be has fast (or almost has fast) than having a caster.  If I don't get the feel of it, why I will take Monk for a DPS classes when I know that Sorc do 2 more damage on the way of a fight?

TTH (ten ton hammer) got some visit from Elrar and Aradune last week.  The poll indicate the feel we get about it is real.    Now, someone here can show parsed file about it? 

Please,  go on that thread and give some nice post like I can read over there

Jourdelune

All offensive casters how some way to regen their mana faster.  Taproot, vile ritual, etc.  As a druid, i never worreid about mana i could taproot it back, as a necro i never ran out of mana because i always used vial ritual.

As a sorc played for a little bit, they were very weak imo.  They didn't do the high burst damage i was expecting honestly, my cleric could out damage a sorc it felt like at lower lvls.  Maybe they pick up speed later on?  However i was looking at sorc end game spells and i still didn't see too many crazy numbers.  Their main attack got up to the 1k+ mark, but DKs still have 2 3k nukes by 50.  Just tossing out some random info i've come across.  I personally think the balance is fine atm, my monk has been out-parsing a sorc when we group in graystone (skeletons FTW!) but oh well.

And I suppose you can also continue to Nuke while tap-rooting?  I don't know about you, but as soon as I cast on my druid, I no longer regen mana.

And if you aren't casting while regening mana, you aren't generating any DPS.

A Necro comes to the closes to an Offensive fighter in sustained DPS but that's mostly true IF there are a lot of corpses around, which in an EXP non-stop pull group that will be the case.  However, in a raid situation that may not be the case if a Boss mob takes say, 5 or 10 minutes to kill.

Psi's can maintain a lot of sustained DPS, IF a healer can be spared to constantly heal them which in certain situations (raids) might or might not be practical.

So again, you cannot use a blanket statement saying the DPS of  X class or family of classes is better than Y class or family of classes without stating the situation where that is true.

And if you are going to judge casters in groups where they can get mana regen and cast speed reductions, etc...  You would also need to consider offensive fighters in melee friendly groups as well.  And once again it is a wash with one set of classes being better in certain situations and the other set of classes being better in certain situations.

Get the right group together and you can easily triple or quadruple an offensive fighters DPS output.  I'm sure it's also similar for casters with the right complementary classes.

Then you can get into raid situations where cross group buffing is possible and now, how are things going to compare.

So please, no blanket statements, eh? 

Regards,
Croaker

The big problem right now is that, by design, mana regen was at one time very slow. Casters were supposed to have Burst DPS to burn down a mob and then meditate for a while. Melees had a lower but much more consistant DPS and were able to go on forever.
Later, they improved the mana regen out of fights by a huge margin. Honestly, it was needed, having to regen mana for 5 minutes is anything but fun. But they didn't nerf the burst DPS capability of casters. Now, they can burst. And then burst again. And again, and again. They don't have any down time as long as you single pull.
On a single mob, in regular settings (4-5dots mob, with a full group), the only thing holding back a Sorcerer's DPS is his aggro. If he burns his mana down, he's going to outdamage the melees easily, by a lot.
In this situation, it's not balanced.

But you have to consider other situations. If you pull 3 to 5 mobs, the Sorcerer will have to pace himself or he'll be OoM after the first mob. In raids, it should balance out as well, as fights should be longer. Even on single group boss mobs (5 to 6 dots), I believe it balances out.

All in all, I believe it's pretty balanced. It hardly matters on single pulls.