So basically this is a list on 1-12 classes you know how to play and the further down we get the less you know how to play a certain class. I'd suggest practicing your weak classes so you can bring them to the top of the list! Good luck and have fun!
I guess you can teach us all how to play all classes the best:) thank you for your helpful comment.
You might be right, maybe I played it wrong. I used the build of Penguin and he seemed to think as I thought too. Could you share your own build? Would appreciate your suggestions.
For the daggers, both are above 20 (a rare and a unique), and my DPS was always very decent, so they're not the problem.
The problem was that any small mistake (or the DC showing up, or the Red Templar boss earthquake hit when I was killing an archer) I was dead. Even during the momentary switch from flank attack to invisibility, I could find myself with 10% of health vs beginning of the move. I could show up in the 1st of 2nd place if the team was good (because I was doing lots of clean up), but I never felt like I could solo even in Threatening difficulty. This class seemed always like a suboptimal assassin to me...
Actually Alchemist is probably my favorite class because of its versatility. I run a poison build that's been very effective for me so far, lots of AOE dmg and DoT.
Sneak
Toxic Cloud
Elemental Mines
Shadow Strike
Try it out, its a lot of fun. - I run it on Perilous and rarely go down while providing lots of DPS for the team.
There are classes that currently coast to higher difficulty levels, coast to the top of the match scoreboard, or coast to soloing or clutching victories. Then there are classes that can only perform with just the right skills, just the right equipment and just the right understanding of how to precisely play. Of course, some classes fall in between.
Telling people that balance is fine because you have found ways you claim allow you to get beyond the challenges of a class isn't relevant when other classes never faced those challenges.
From a balance perspective, there are probably 3 buckets. Classes that work fine today, classes that need a small boost and classes that need a larger boost. Boost classes as needed to match performance (no need to homogenize them, they can work very differently and still achieve a comparable level of success) and then add in another 2-3 levels of difficulty beyond Perilous where the goal is a difficulty that CANNOT be soled and remains a challenge for coordinated 4 person teams.
When you're playing a game thats supposed to be multiplayer and co op. And some one who wants to play the game like its a race and they can go though every enemy and every group with a character while everyone else scrambles to do treasure rooms and stuff just so you can get the gold. That is a problem....unless its on routine.
Sustained doesn't mean what you apparently think it does. Please read my posts above before continuing to insist otherwise. We're not talking about burst damage, where the Reaver is nearly unparalleled. I've explicitly said this above, and provided very simple numerical illustrations (using figures a Reaver-dps-supporter provided, no less).
Your build AW damage is burst damage. You get a spike when you cast a spell and then it goes on cooldown and your DPS drops to either zero because you're moving or staff autoattack damage, your particular build has two 8 second cooldowns and a 12 second cooldown on it's main damage sources. Reaver damage is sustained, it seems like burst damage because a Reaver's sustained damage does more in 1 second than an AW's peak burst can, but it's sustained, it can be maintained non-stop without dropping as long as there are targets to damage.
You seem to be arguing from this weird position where you're assuming an AW has zero downtime on dealing damage, while a Reaver is miles from the action and dealing none; when the reality is that a Reaver can run the range of PotA in about 4 seconds (that's without up to 70% movement speed buff from Dragon Rage and Scenting Blood), and the time it takes to cast PotA, Chain Lightning, and Stonefist is about 4 seconds if you instantly position your PotA where you want it. Ultimately, DPS counts from when you engage the baddies - both an AW and a Reaver have to walk from one door to the next - the fact that there is space between one pull and the next doesn't render a Reaver's DPS zero anymore than it does an AW.
Just to lay some numbers down here:
Assume an AW has the highest possible damage weapon (staff of the dynamo and you never get hit so you always have the 20% bonus damage).
Give them +45% attack.
We'll say the Dynamo has 63 damage and a spirit rune - 88 damage, 143DPS. 249DPS counting attack% and Dynamo.
Your CL averages 1148 maximum single target damage every 8 seconds, that's 144 DPS counting attack% and Dynamo.
Your Stonefist, if we say it combos every time, and combo is double damage, is 1531 single target every 8 seconds, that's 191 DPS counting attack% and Dynamo.
So, 4 seconds into a fight, you've dealt CL and Stonefist, 3080 damage (being generous and adding the +15% vs weakened), and you now have a choice, deal zero damage per second while you run in yourself and deal Fade Cloak damage 4 seconds from now (if your timing is perfect), or deal 249DPS (286 vs weakened) from your staff while you wait for CL and Stonefist to cool down.
Now how about that Reaver?
Say the Reaver has the same 45% attack, but we won't even give them their highest damage weapon, say Sundering with 270 damage, and a superb lightning rune = 295 damage.
We won't make the Reaver's situation perfect at all, they won't event cast Dragon Rage for the (newly ninja buffed) 20% damage bonus.
Dragon Rage damage: 855 per hit, two hits per second (that's 1710 DPS, sustained dps)
Completely ignoring probable extra damage from Fervor (30%), Coup de Gras (30%), and then extra damage from being hurt (Dragon rage, Blood Frenzy), very likely some flanking bonus (25%) in two seconds the Reaver will deal 3420 damage, probably to everything the PotA caught. it's now six seconds from out theoretical "go time" and the AW has potentially dealt 3578 to a single target if he's been autoattacking, and significantly less to everything else. If the AW is trying for a Fadecloak hit, then their damage is still languishing on 3080 and they will not deal more for at least another two seconds (4 seconds to walk up, remember). In that two seconds the Reaver can deal another 3420 damage.
Now remember, I'm comparing a theoretical maximum AW damage, to a theoretical minimum Reaver damage, and the Reaver is still dealing almost twice as much, from a starting position that is most advantageous to the AW. In reality the Reaver can and will deal much more damage, and the AW can and will deal much less.
Of course I have not counted crits for either AW or Reaver, but that actually pushes things further in the Reaver's favor because they simply crit much more.
Simply put, a Reaver utterly wipes the floor with AW damage, it's not a contest, it's not close, it's completely amazing to me that you can say you enjoy playing a Reaver in perilous and yet not realise how drastic the difference in damage output is.
Thank you for actually engaging in the discussion rather than making blanket comments.
Your build AW damage is burst damage. You get a spike when you cast a spell and then it goes on cooldown and your DPS drops to either zero because you're moving or staff autoattack damage, your particular build has two 8 second cooldowns and a 12 second cooldown on it's main damage sources. Reaver damage is sustained, it seems like burst damage because a Reaver's sustained damage does more in 1 second than an AW's peak burst can, but it's sustained, it can be maintained non-stop without dropping as long as there are targets to damage.
You seem to be arguing from this weird position where you're assuming an AW has zero downtime on dealing damage, while a Reaver is miles from the action and dealing none; when the reality is that a Reaver can run the range of PotA in about 4 seconds (that's without up to 70% movement speed buff from Dragon Rage and Scenting Blood), and the time it takes to cast PotA, Chain Lightning, and Stonefist is about 4 seconds if you instantly position your PotA where you want it. Ultimately, DPS counts from when you engage the baddies - both an AW and a Reaver have to walk from one door to the next - the fact that there is space between one pull and the next doesn't render a Reaver's DPS zero anymore than it does an AW.
Reaver damage is burst, because you deal a lot in a short amount of time. Your premise is that someone or something has pulled together all your enemies for you. Your example is a teammate using PotA. To me, this is a specific scenario that speaks more to the strength of PotA than to the Reaver.
Your CL averages 1148 maximum single target damage every 8 seconds, that's 144 DPS counting attack% and Dynamo.
Your Stonefist, if we say it combos every time, and combo is double damage, is 1531 single target every 8 seconds, that's 191 DPS counting attack% and Dynamo.
So, 4 seconds into a fight, you've dealt CL and Stonefist, 3080 damage (being generous and adding the +15% vs weakened), and you now have a choice, deal zero damage per second while you run in yourself and deal Fade Cloak damage 4 seconds from now (if your timing is perfect), or deal 249DPS (286 vs weakened) from your staff while you wait for CL and Stonefist to cool down.
CL doesn't just hit one target, it hits 6. Stonefist is also not single target. The AoE is significant, and the damage dealt is spirit. Gathering Storm means the cooldowns are a good bit shorter than nominal. Again, every second counts when you're comparing DPS.
Dragon Rage damage: 855 per hit, two hits per second (that's 1710 DPS, sustained dps)
Completely ignoring probable extra damage from Fervor (30%), Coup de Gras (30%), and then extra damage from being hurt (Dragon rage, Blood Frenzy), very likely some flanking bonus (25%) in two seconds the Reaver will deal 3420 damage, probably to everything the PotA caught. it's now six seconds from out theoretical "go time" and the AW has potentially dealt 3578 to a single target if he's been autoattacking, and significantly less to everything else. If the AW is trying for a Fadecloak hit, then their damage is still languishing on 3080 and they will not deal more for at least another two seconds (4 seconds to walk up, remember). In that two seconds the Reaver can deal another 3420 damage.
Here again you assume everything has been caught by PotA, which I contend is not a reasonable assumption. If your premise is that you rely on a PotA, then sure you can Dragon Rage to your heart's content (assuming you have some mechanism for staying alive). I certainly won't argue that a PotA-supported Reaver won't seriously out-DPS the AW. But the discussion is about DPS output in general, not in specific situations.
You also didn't consider overkill. That is, pretty much every single point of damage the AW deals is contributing, i.e. is taking something's health down. Since the Reaver deals so much spike damage, a lot of that is wasted, especially on the squishier mobs. It wouldn't make sense to include that overkill damage, because you're not contributing to killing at that point. This is a very important detail that can't be emphasized enough.
Now remember, I'm comparing a theoretical maximum AW damage, to a theoretical minimum Reaver damage, and the Reaver is still dealing almost twice as much, from a starting position that is most advantageous to the AW. In reality the Reaver can and will deal much more damage, and the AW can and will deal much less.
Again, the Reaver having access to PotA automatically disqualifies the notion that this is a "theoretical minimum". You mention starting position, which has been a point I've tried to make. How does the Reaver safely get into the fray? Rely on Barrier? Rely on friendly CC? Run in and War Horn? The last option has a moderate casting time, and most importantly, makes mobs run around. This means you spend even more time going from mob to mob. Time not spent dishing out meaningful damage. There are ways to make the Reaver work as you illustrate, but it requires specific things like PotA, Barrier, CC, support from teammates etc. "In reality", as you put, it's not always so rosy.
Simply put, a Reaver utterly wipes the floor with AW damage, it's not a contest, it's not close, it's completely amazing to me that you can say you enjoy playing a Reaver in perilous and yet not realise how drastic the difference in damage output is.
The Reaver truly shines if you can get the supporting factors I mentioned above, but generally won't "wipe the floor" with AW DPS.
the number one priority should be to make melee classes more durable. This means damage resistance, absorption and healing for the katari and reaver and more evasion and CC from the assassin and alchemist (stunlock and interupts)
Reaver damage is burst, because you deal a lot in a short amount of time. Your premise is that someone or something has pulled together all your enemies for you. Your example is a teammate using PotA. To me, this is a specific scenario that speaks more to the strength of PotA than to the Reaver.
No. Sustained damage doesn't stop being sustained just because everything is dead. The Reaver does the same continuous steady DPS against a commander (at higher risk) as it does against a random mook. Burst DPS is on-demand damage on a cooldown that is much higher than your normal dps.
Basically, if you record and graph your DPS every second where you're dealing damage, sustained DPS will be comparitively flat, and burst DPS will have significant player controlled spikes.
Not having a target is not the same thing as doing zero dps.
The Reason I used PotA in my post is I was trying to give an example which is basically an ideal for DPS for an AW, and disadvantageous for a Reaver in the same group, and to demonstrate that the Reaver will still do much more damage than the AW in the same space of time (the timeframe in question ending with everything dead from >~3500 damage to all those perilous mooks).
In a lobby I would consider near ideal for a Reaver pick, where there is a Keeper, a Legionnaire and perhaps a Hunter there is absolutely no way the AW is a superior choice for DPS. Conversely I would not pick a Reaver over an AW in a lobby with a Necro, a Katari and an Archer, but the AW is still not a DPS powerhouse choice (AW DPS IS NOT HIGH).
There are a lot of ways to group mobs together, PotA and Static Cage are basically the best. A Reaver doesn't actually need everything grouped together to kill everything fast, it's just that it will kill everything in ~2-2.5 seconds if they are grouped up. Every class benefits from the mobs being grouped together (except possibly an assassin). Here's the thing, If the mobs are packed together, the Reaver kills them faster than an AW, if they are spread out - the Reaver still kills them faster than the AW.
You need to accept that in the imaginary scenario I presented, with the Reaver there, everything is dead within 6-7 seconds of the AW casting PotA whether the AW does damage or not. Without the Reaver there most or all of them are still alive even with the AW attacking them and it will probably be more like 15 seconds from the casting of PotA until they are all dead.
CL doesn't just hit one target, it hits 6. Stonefist is also not single target. The AoE is significant, and the damage dealt is spirit. Gathering Storm means the cooldowns are a good bit shorter than nominal. Again, every second counts when you're comparing DPS.
All of these statements are true, however the damage I was listing was highest possible (non-crit) to a single target for each ability, collateral targets will take the same, or, more probably, less damage.
Maximum CL damage is one target getting hit three times = 750% weapon damage, which is the 1148 average I listed based on the 88 average damage of the staff I listed, with the +45% attack and the additional +20% bonus from the staff of the Dynamo. CL is almost always not going to do that much damage to any single target.
The Stonefist damage I listed was based on the same staff at 500% and the assumption that you will combo it, and that the combo bonus is another 500% damage (this was an incredibly generous assumption). Stonefist is basically guaranteed to not do as much damage as I listed.
Gathering storm is a quirky one, in practice if you attack continuously it will drop an 8 second cooldown to about 5 to 5.5 seconds thanks to animation. Expecting Gathering Storm to have a large impact on your cooldowns in a build that includes Fadecloak for damage is... curious.
No. Sustained damage doesn't stop being sustained just because everything is dead. The Reaver does the same continuous steady DPS against a commander (at higher risk) as it does against a random mook. Burst DPS is on-demand damage on a cooldown that is much higher than your normal dps.
Basically, if you record and graph your DPS every second where you're dealing damage, sustained DPS will be comparitively flat, and burst DPS will have significant player controlled spikes.
Not having a target is not the same thing as doing zero dps.
"Sustain" means to maintain. If everything is dead, there is no more damage left for you to maintain. Your damage is no longer being sustained. This is by definition.
You seem to have two different definitions of what Burst means. The latter, which is generally how the term is understood, defines Burst based solely on how the Damage vs. Time graph would look like. For a Reaver, it would look exactly as you describe, with spikes where you're Raging away, and precisely 0 damage when running. Your first definition of "on-demand damage on a cooldown" is one type of mechanism that results in burst, or spike, damage. In this case, your ability to continue dishing out damage is bottlenecked by the cooldown. But it is by no means the only way in which Burst manifests itself. In the Reaver's case, your ability to continue dishing out damage is bottlenecked by the physical distance between one set of mobs and the next, as well as the time spent staying alive throughout all of this.
That is why Reaver is superb burst DPS, but not "floor-wiping" sustained DPS.
Not having a target is not the same thing as doing zero dps.
In fact, it quite literally is. I don't see how you can argue otherwise. To reiterate one last time, every moment you are NOT HITTING SOMETHING you are dealing zero damage, and thus your overall DPS is dropping. That's just math. If it takes me two seconds to run from one mob to the next, I have just dealt 0 damage over 2 seconds. In other words, my DPS for those 2 seconds was exactly 0. This reduces my overall DPS. Furthermore, Reaver's superb burst can quickly destroy that archer you rush, but the maximum damage you actually deal can only be equal to the max health of the mobs you kill. This is the point I was making about overkill damage, which you also did not address. You need to divide all the damage you deal over the total time it took for you to deal that damage, including the time it takes for you to run in, starting from where the AW would have begun attacking.
In a lobby I would consider near ideal for a Reaver pick, where there is a Keeper, a Legionnaire and perhaps a Hunter there is absolutely no way the AW is a superior choice for DPS. Conversely I would not pick a Reaver over an AW in a lobby with a Necro, a Katari and an Archer, but the AW is still not a DPS powerhouse choice (AW DPS IS NOT HIGH).
The question has never been whether or not the AW is a "superior choice for DPS". I have never made this claim. I have only been trying to counter the original claim that "Reaver DPS wipes the floor with AW DPS".
A Reaver doesn't actually need everything grouped together to kill everything fast, it's just that it will kill everything in ~2-2.5 seconds if they are grouped up.
Now, we're getting to the core of the issue. I absolutely agree it will kill everything quickly if they are grouped up, which I've also repeated this several times. The problem is when they are not grouped together, which is the more general and common case. Without a reliable Barrier (another variable, especially in PuGs), and with no Guard generation, a Reaver has to somewhat tiptoe around the battlefield so you don't catch stray arrows to the knee. Whatever tools she has at her disposal either cost a slot or cost precious time. Time spent Not. Dealing. Damage.
You need to accept that in the imaginary scenario I presented, with the Reaver there, everything is dead within 6-7 seconds of the AW casting PotA whether the AW does damage or not. Without the Reaver there most or all of them are still alive even with the AW attacking them and it will probably be more like 15 seconds from the casting of PotA until they are all dead.
I don't "need to accept" anything, certainly not the scenario you presented that assumes the Reaver has an AW teammate who graciously casts PotA for her convenience. In fact, I absolutely reject this premise, but I already voiced this sentiment in my last post.
All of these statements are true, however the damage I was listing was highest possible (non-crit) to a single target for each ability, collateral targets will take the same, or, more probably, less damage.
Maximum CL damage is one target getting hit three times = 750% weapon damage, which is the 1148 average I listed based on the 88 average damage of the staff I listed, with the +45% attack and the additional +20% bonus from the staff of the Dynamo. CL is almost always not going to do that much damage to any single target.
The Stonefist damage I listed was based on the same staff at 500% and the assumption that you will combo it, and that the combo bonus is another 500% damage (this was an incredibly generous assumption). Stonefist is basically guaranteed to not do as much damage as I listed.
We're discussing actual damage dealt, so it makes no sense to only consider one target. No one said anything about comparing how much they can spike on one unfortunate mob. If there are multiple targets (and there usually are), however un-clumped they are, CL will deal its full damage, minus a little bit of overkill, which isn't much. The same cannot be said of the Reaver. On most kills, especially squishies, there is a significant amount of overkill damage, which does not contribute anything to her DPS. The Reaver's output is therefore more sustained on target with a lot of health, but in the game, you deal with a smattering of squishy targets with some tankies sprinkled in.
The Stonefist combo damage isn't necessary, since getting Stonefist to hit multiple targets is a very simple task; the AoE is quite decent.
Gathering storm is a quirky one, in practice if you attack continuously it will drop an 8 second cooldown to about 5 to 5.5 seconds thanks to animation. Expecting Gathering Storm to have a large impact on your cooldowns in a build that includes Fadecloak for damage is... curious.
Dropping an 8s cd to even 6s is very significant. Let's say cast time is 2s for Stonefist + CL? That means your rotation that was 10s long is now 8s long. If you dealt X Damage over these 10s, now you're dealing X Damage over 8s. Your DPS went from X/10 to X/8: that's a 25% increase. In reality, you're losing a couple of autoattacks in there, so the gain is probably more like 15-20%, but I would certainly claim that it's a "large impact".
All else aside, you haven't at all explained how you deal with things that block or otherwise stagger/stun you. Not only are you no longer dealing appreciable damage, you're a sitting duck for anything trying to kill you. Any trick you try (Combat Rolling, LoSing, War Horning, etc.) further reduce your damage output as you spend time dodging about.
For the AW, you don't have issues with blocking, and anything that comes directly at you, you can deal with using Fade Cloak. This is actually my preferred usage of the skill, saving it for things that rush at me or would otherwise interrupt my output. The invulnerability and subsequent massive AoE damage + knockdown is invaluable.
We're discussing actual damage dealt, so it makes no sense to only consider one target. No one said anything about comparing how much they can spike on one unfortunate mob. If there are multiple targets (and there usually are), however un-clumped they are, CL will deal its full damage, minus a little bit of overkill, which isn't much. The same cannot be said of the Reaver. On most kills, especially squishies, there is a significant amount of overkill damage, which does not contribute anything to her DPS. The Reaver's output is therefore more sustained on target with a lot of health, but in the game, you deal with a smattering of squishy targets with some tankies sprinkled in.
The Stonefist combo damage isn't necessary, since getting Stonefist to hit multiple targets is a very simple task; the AoE is quite decent.
I'm talking single target damage for the purposes of illustrating how long it takes to kill things, the "single target" is the highest damage the AW deals. Your Perilous mooks have ~3500+ health, you need to do that much to all of them to kill them all.
When I seriously exaggerate the damage that an AW is capable of, it's doing around 3500 to one of them after about 6 seconds, all the others have taken about 1800 or less damage each from the AW (we'll say there are 5 of them for no good reason).
If they are grouped together (in this case by PotA) when I give the Reaver a seriously low-balled theoretical damage it still deals ~3500 damage in two seconds.
Everything dead in two seconds + the four seconds to run up, vs one maybe dead and 4 on ~40%+ health. This comparison is "best" the AW can do vs "worst" a Reaver can do if they are both able to deliver their damage uninterrupted. To reiterate, my comparison stacked every possible advantage and boost to the AW's damage (except the +15% vs fear, since fear would also give the Reaver 100% crit chance), and ignored highly probably boosts exceeding +50% damage for the Reaver.
This is a "perfect grouping that benefits both players, no doubt some genius will point out that a Reaver doesn't hit everyone at once 100% of the time, and I'm not considering blocks for the Reaver the same way as I'm not considering line of sight problems for the AW (which love to pop out of nowhere when you knock mooks down with stonefist).
The question has never been whether or not the AW is a "superior choice for DPS". I have never made this claim. I have only been trying to counter the original claim that "Reaver DPS wipes the floor with AW DPS".
A Reaver can do more damage in 2 seconds than an AW can do in 6, and all of that damage gets dealt to everything in front of the Reaver. Are you being deliberately obtuse? Your argument is that a Reaver is not dealing damage 100% of the time, like an AW somehow is?
Dropping an 8s cd to even 6s is very significant. Let's say cast time is 2s for Stonefist + CL? That means your rotation that was 10s long is now 8s long. If you dealt X Damage over these 10s, now you're dealing X Damage over 8s. Your DPS went from X/10 to X/8: that's a 25% increase. In reality, you're losing a couple of autoattacks in there, so the gain is probably more like 15-20%, but I would certainly claim that it's a "large impact".
In DPS terms, CL and Stonefist are both inferior to your staff on a single target.
CL is (88*7.5)/8 (on your rotation) = 82.5 DPS (it's actually 165DPS spread through the pack)
Stonefist (88*5)/8 = 55 DPS (this is multiplied by the number of targets)
Staff, 88*1.61 = 141DPS (that multiplier was rounded, its actually 143)
Why single target again? The single target is the one you hurt the most, everything else gets hurt less, the pull is not cleared until they are all dead. Everything that is not the "single target" will die slower than the "single target"
If we're generous, say that you never have to interrupt your auto-attack and stonefist hits 5 targets every time, you never lose the +20% damage bonus from Dynamo, and you always get the +15% damage bonus against weakened targets the AWs total DPS, would rock in around 1166 - bear in mind this is a ludicrously over-estimated figure.
Where's that Reaver?
Oh yeah - in excess of 1710DPS all which is multiplied by the number of targets you can hit. Just pressing the Rampage button increases that to 2052. Lose 10% health? It's now 2308. One mook in the pull dies? It's now 2821.
Wasted damage? Kill streak door-to-door and we're doing 5/5 right?
That's called "wiping the floor".
Guest_Mortiel_*
Please stop saying "every character is viable". By that line of thinking, a character with Stealth, Caltrops, Evade, and Hook and Tackle is viable. And I bet plenty of players would be able to solo Perilous with it, too. But if I gave you a class whose best 4 skills were those, would you still say "it's fine, it's viable, leave it alone" ? If so, kudos to you.
False Dichotomy. Look up the term. Not everyone is silly enough to fall into that trap. Creating a non-existant build of skills that would lack synergy and presenting them as the only choice is not the way to illustrate a point. It actually unfortunately discredits a valid point you are trying to make on skill balancing by making the reader feel that have to choose options that don't actually exist. Improper arguments are the reason behind most topics turning into childish bickering.
A class being viable means that it can work, not that it will work. Every character is viable, but not every build, every player, nor every team composition.
With that said, to agree with your actual meaning: Balance not being needed in co-op is a filthy lie. Seeing a Arcane Warrior run off and rambo the level playing FadeShield2Win in a PUG match may benefit me and make the game easier at a cursory glance. In reality, it actually sours the game and makes it less fun. Does handing players free XP for watching someone else play a match keep people playing a game? No, it doesn't.
Now, once bugs are squashed and things are running smoother, balance changes will happen. Hopefully Fade Shield will be first in the cross-hairs in order to make it encourage a more team-friendly Arcane Warrior. Hopefully Spirit Mark will have it's follower AI fixed to it's less of a novelty and more useful. Maybe Caltops will have an buff to the speed debuff it gives and last longer. We will see.
We're not talking about burst damage, where the Reaver is nearly unparalleled.
I'm pretty happy with the balance for the most part. Since it's a co-op game with no PvP, I don't think perfect balance across all classes is a top priority.I'm not arguing that AW and Ele aren't more powerful than some of the other classes. I just don't think it really matters that much.
Now, once bugs are squashed and things are running smoother, balance changes will happen. Hopefully Fade Shield will be first in the cross-hairs in order to make it encourage a more team-friendly Arcane Warrior. Hopefully Spirit Mark will have it's follower AI fixed to it's less of a novelty and more useful. Maybe Caltops will have an buff to the speed debuff it gives and last longer. We will see.
I'm not surprised that one of the first classes to get "balanced" was the Reaver (for reasons pretty much outlined in my earlier posts).
I think Barrier in all it's forms should be tweaked because it's, in my opinion, the skill with the single biggest impact with respect to making Perilous "easy".
It's a coop game, motivation for rebalancing will be mostly based on whether the player base is considered to be clearing Perilous (or whichever difficulty they actually balance around) too quickly or slowly, and which classes are having the biggest impact. For this reason I expect the high damage dealers to be eyeballed first (Reaver already, and probably not for the last time) and the AW will probably be all the way down the list near Keeper, unless they specifically go after Barrier.
They will never buff caltrops. Already OP.
I'm talking single target damage for the purposes of illustrating how long it takes to kill things, the "single target" is the highest damage the AW deals. Your Perilous mooks have ~3500+ health, you need to do that much to all of them to kill them all.
[...] the pull is not cleared until they are all dead.
In the same post you advocate "talking single target damage" and having to "kill them all". Do you see the contradiction here? The Reaver kills a single target faster than the AW can, no one is contending that. But that's exactly what spike damage is, and I'm not going to go over that again. DPS includes to ALL the damage you can put out. If I hit 1000 mobs for 1 damage each in 1 second time, I have done 1000 DPS. Why? Because I have dealt a total of 1000 damage. Per second. If you hit 1 mob for 1000 damage in 1 second, you also deal 1000 DPS. The AW's effective AoE (through CL range and Stonefist "explosion" range) is much larger than the Reaver's. Disregarding the impact this has on DPS would be irresponsible.
If they are grouped together (in this case by PotA) [...]
That qualification invalidates everything after it, as I've explained several times already. You're setting up an advantageous scenario, hardly the "worst" that you claim it is.
To reiterate, my comparison stacked every possible advantage and boost to the AW's damage (except the +15% vs fear, since fear would also give the Reaver 100% crit chance), and ignored highly probably boosts exceeding +50% damage for the Reaver.
No, your comparison does not. As mentioned above, you are ignoring the fact that AoE damage is still damage. By all means, add in other "probable" boosts for the Reaver. We are trying to be as realistic as possible. You're not doing anyone any favors by leaving anything reasonable out.
This comparison is "best" the AW can do vs "worst" a Reaver can do if they are both able to deliver their damage uninterrupted.
This is a "perfect grouping that benefits both players, no doubt some genius will point out that a Reaver doesn't hit everyone at once 100% of the time, and I'm not considering blocks for the Reaver the same way as I'm not considering line of sight problems for the AW (which love to pop out of nowhere when you knock mooks down with stonefist).
Your argument is that a Reaver is not dealing damage 100% of the time, like an AW somehow is?
There is no reason to assume they can deal their damage uninterrupted. In fact, a big chunk of my argument is precisely that the Reaver can't, and the break in her damage-dealing is much larger than the break in the AWs, aka she can't sustain as well. I've also stated this multiple times...
The Reaver doesn't hit everyone at once even most of the time. The only time that happens is if you assume some pull that someone else cast for you. Beating a dead horse at this point. In fact, most of the time for the Reaver is spent dodging and running from mob to mob. That is the key. The game doesn't consist of test dummies clumped together for you to hack. If it did, then Reaver would be the single most absurd omgOPbroken class there is.
So please, do consider blocks and all the other hurdles I've mentioned several times and explain how you plan on getting around them. The foregone conclusion is that whatever you do will cost you significant time, which seriously reduces your DPS.
Let's consider similar "issues" for the AW. You say line of sight? Once you aggro something in the group, they all move into your line of sight, because they need LoS to attack you too. Chain Lightning? The bounces will trigger regardless of your LoS as long as you have something to initially cast on. Defensively, I mentioned in my last post that anything that isn't dead or knocked back by the time they reach you can be taken care of with Fade Cloak. And while you're in FC, you can still cast and attack.
So yeah, the AW is dealing damage nearly 100% of the time. And yes, my argument is precisely that the Reaver is dealing damage for a much smaller percentage of the time. Just because they're not both exactly 100% doesn't mean they're anywhere near the same.
Where's that Reaver?
Oh yeah - in excess of 1710DPS all which is multiplied by the number of targets you can hit.
You can't conveniently ignore AW's damage to multiple targets and then go on to multiply Reaver DPS by "the number of targets you can hit." Which, by the way, will invariably be a smaller number of targets than the AW is hitting.
Wasted damage? Kill streak door-to-door and we're doing 5/5 right?
Yes. Wasted damage. Just phrasing it as a question doesn't constitute a response. And I'm really not sure what the second...question?...is supposed to illustrate.
Are you being deliberately obtuse?
Seriously?
You can't conveniently ignore AW's damage to multiple targets and then go on to multiply Reaver DPS by "the number of targets you can hit." Which, by the way, will invariably be a smaller number of targets than the AW is hitting.
I literally assumed an AW was hitting 5 targets every single time he uses Stonefist, and including damage for every single one of the six hits from CL, ridiculously over the top, and the complete opposite of ignoring the AW's damage to multiple targets.
You want the single target DPS? It's a dismal 561 even when I pretend you don't have to stop autoattacking to cast spells. Against a Reaver's ability to exceed this over 400% when I'm lowballing her damage, I just don't know how you're unable to consider this "wiping the floor".
False Dichotomy. Look up the term. Not everyone is silly enough to fall into that trap. Creating a non-existant build of skills that would lack synergy and presenting them as the only choice is not the way to illustrate a point. It actually unfortunately discredits a valid point you are trying to make on skill balancing by making the reader feel that have to choose options that don't actually exist. Improper arguments are the reason behind most topics turning into childish bickering.
A class being viable means that it can work, not that it will work. Every character is viable, but not every build, every player, nor every team composition.
I am well acquainted with False Dichotomy. My example was not a trap at all. It was an analogy in response to the prior post, just one among several of its kind, that claimed "all characters are viable". My extreme example was to illustrate that "viable" does not preclude the need for balance. As I said, the silly build I described would be "viable", and I also said that I guarantee a good number of players would be able to make it work, which is what the previous poster was qualifying as sufficient criteria.
Several others here also hold the view that "if you can come up with some way to make a class work, then it's fine." I disagree, and evidently so do you. My argument, then, was that despite this repulsive setup being "viable", very few players would not welcome a buff to said imaginary class. The punchline was that we all draw lines somewhere, but having the line at "can possibly be made to work", aka viable, is altogether too low a bar for balance.
Nearly. I'd say an Assassin or Archer have the potential of much higher burst damage. They are, after all, the quintessential strikers.
I explicitly said as much earlier in the thread. See post #39.
I literally assumed an AW was hitting 5 targets every single time he uses Stonefist, and including damage for every single one of the six hits from CL, ridiculously over the top, and the complete opposite of ignoring the AW's damage to multiple targets.
You want the single target DPS? It's a dismal 561 even when I pretend you don't have to stop autoattacking to cast spells. Against a Reaver's ability to exceed this over 400% when I'm lowballing her damage, I just don't know how you're unable to consider this "wiping the floor".
It seems we have reached a point where you are unwilling or unable to address my concerns, which I have repeated over and over again. That's fine, none of this will change how much I play either of the two classes (a lot 
), and I've never been a min-maxer to be bothered by these things. As you have not persuaded me otherwise, I will continue to believe the Reaver was slightly over-nerfed and the Katari (Maker bless the pain train) is ever-in-need of love.
Guest_Mortiel_*
I am well acquainted with False Dichotomy. My example was not a trap at all. It was an analogy in response to the prior post, just one among several of its kind, that claimed "all characters are viable". My extreme example was to illustrate that "viable" does not preclude the need for balance. As I said, the silly build I described would be "viable", and I also said that I guarantee a good number of players would be able to make it work, which is what the previous poster was qualifying as sufficient criteria.
Several others here also hold the view that "if you can come up with some way to make a class work, then it's fine." I disagree, and evidently so do you. My argument, then, was that despite this repulsive setup being "viable", very few players would not welcome a buff to said imaginary class. The punchline was that we all draw lines somewhere, but having the line at "can possibly be made to work", aka viable, is altogether too low a bar for balance.
I explicitly said as much earlier in the thread. See post #39.
I mean, is it really that important whether something is sustained versus burst damage? It really just diverted from the argument of necessary balance for all classes, including the Arcane Warrior.
It's absolutely not important, lol. But some others were insisting the Arcane Warrior was "balanced" with Reaver/Katari based off the claim that the latter (in particular, Reaver) "wiped the floor" with AW damage. I contended otherwise. Unfortunately, it dragged on. I did my best to debunk that idea, but it doesn't seem to have taken.
No matter, now we're back on topic!
The damage of the Arcane Warrior is not where I would focus, however. Fade Shield would be my focus.
Agreed. I've already had private discussions with a few on the forums here regarding the general Barrier vs Guard problem. I still think the huge discrepancy between the two should be a top balance priority. And, if Guard is indeed buffed, then Legionnaire needs nerf to several of his skills to compensate.
Although, new content with much stronger armor, opponents, and difficulty levels might level things out. But, at least as of now, I think a lot of the balance problems stem from here.
Guest_Mortiel_*
Agreed. I've already had private discussions with a few on the forums here regarding the general Barrier vs Guard problem. I still think the huge discrepancy between the two should be a top balance priority. And, if Guard is indeed buffed, then Legionnaire needs nerf to several of his skills to compensate.
Although, new content with much stronger armor, opponents, and difficulty levels might level things out. But, at least as of now, I think a lot of the balance problems stem from here.
Agreed. Stronger armour will make Guard better, as the main benefit of Guard over Barrier is that it has armour mitigation. It's even worse that most armour-buffing passives are broken currently (as far as I remember), so warriors are just as flimsy as everyone else. Hell, my Necromancer has higher armour than most warrior classes. That is all wrong to me. The Legionnaire and Templar (sword and shield) should have higher armour values than all other classes, followed closely by Katari and Reaver (two-handers), and further by rogues, and furthest by mages (Arcane Warrior as the exception, instead having values similar to rogues).
Fortunately, I don't see Guard itself getting buffed, as it's problems stem from the armour system, or lack thereof.
With that said, the inclusion of a multiplayer-ported version of Rally on a new class would allow more Guard options without buffing Guard directly, and with a functional armour system it would give a warrior version of a Keeper that can Guard-up a whole team... now that would be interesting.
Now, stronger enemies is always tricky. Having all the same enemy types with higher armour and damage would potentially invoke the dreaded power-creep. Instead, bringing in more enemies that require certain tactics to defeat easily would be more fulfilling. Currently, the vast majority of enemies require little more strategy than smacking them in the face repeatedly. More enemies and with higher stats would be a bad way to approach the situation (read: lazy), at least to me.
Fortunately, I don't see Guard itself getting buffed, as it's problems stem from the armour system, or lack thereof.
The problem is, because armour is fixed, any higher number will trivialise Threatening, as 95 point armour does to Routine now.
Other options dev could do: buff health on warriors. We know it evaporates, but more would indirectly give more potential guard, and hence allow more buffer. Like wise more health gives more pool for for things like HoK to go into.
Buff the 25% of health = guard amount. Similar to above, allowing more potential damage mitigation. The problem with this is Lego would become even more OP, vs making Templar and Katari only just more survivable.
Buff guard generation from skills. e.g.: Charging Bull generating 20% guard per hit. Would allow Lego to be disassociated from the others, but doesn't really help being one-shot by archers etc.
New skills. Less likely as it may introduce new balance issues, and likely they will come to new characters, not existing ones.
Or some combination of these. e.g.: individual kits have health adjusted, and some guard generation skills buffed.
What needs to be looked at is warriors being one-shot, and their health/guard flow during the moment-to-moment of a fight, and between fights, and getting to fights (ranged vs melee).
At the moment the mages are essentially tankier than warriors (except high level legos), just from Death Syphon and Guardian Spirit.
I PuG with my Templar almost exclusively as an attempt to be a door stopper with Line in the Sand (Still missing War Cry 
) rather than the common WoH/Purge boomer, I see alot more Necromancers these days than I do Elementalists and Archers.
The Elementalists that do show up, are firestorming like mad - so I guess there have been some need for awhile to use that ability
On keepers giving out guard, I would have to flat out disagree with this. They already provide barriers, so lets not advocate that they get even more abilities in that direction.
Rather, I think a Templar variant (Prehaps simply name it Seeker) that could give out Guard would be an interesting thing, if the guard given would work off the casters armour rating, rather than the recievers.
A lot of good thoughts guys, despite the fact that it's become a bit too personal. The most interesting part to me is the discussion about barriers.
I'd like to point out that the event this week encourages players to use the class they work the best with, on the easiest difficulty. I have seen ZERO hunters, alchemists, katari, and reaver. That is probably a good place to start for balance reasons.
A lot of good thoughts guys, despite the fact that it's become a bit too personal. The most interesting part to me is the discussion about barriers.
I'd like to point out that the event this week encourages players to use the class they work the best with, on the easiest difficulty. I have seen ZERO hunters, alchemists, katari, and reaver. That is probably a good place to start for balance reasons.
Sure, if you go by the route of least resistance.
I for one cannot be bothered, so I'm just grinding my Templar the way I've always played. So it'll take longer to get 20 immortal badges, but thats fine. I'm not in a hurry.
On keepers giving out guard, I would have to flat out disagree with this. They already provide barriers, so lets not advocate that they get even more abilities in that direction.
What Mortiel was referring to, and correct me if I'm wrong, is the Warrior ability Rally, currently only available in the single player. He's advocating creating a new Warrior subclass that would be able to build party-wide Guard. He mentioned Keeper only as a parallel, as in a Warrior-support that can provide party protection.
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