Path of Physical Damage / Health > Caster / ES

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thinkingofaname wrote:

Oh to the guy complaining about cost of good weapons. Similar wands cost just as much if not more, and check out the price of good ES gears while your at it.

Really? Maybe you should play the game in a real league before complaining about something like this. Honestly, casters have it so much better in terms of cost for what they're going to run. A Doon Cuebiyari costs like 3 exalteds on Nemesis - you can run a pretty strong strength build on that and the mace would give you good synergy with iron will - end up at like 300%+ increased spell damage.

Since you're stacking strength your survivability will be ridiculous too if you make a decent build. Damage will be average - the main strength of it is the survivability.

Complaints about mana management: everybody has mana management issues. Melee characters tend to not be near int nodes and tend to lack that - their base mana will be lower, much lower than casters. Mana Leech does not allow you to run multiple % auras without quite a few reservation reduction nodes regardless of your reduced mana level because your pool will be too low. If you want to do that you're going to run a blood magic gem. It is true that a caster would have to socket in life leech too, but their damage output tends to scale less with available links than with melee physical scaling - you need quite a few gems to actually get to these high damage numbers.

But most of all you guys seem to be forgetting - the high damage numbers tend to be on SINGLE TARGET abilities and not AoE. And even if they are AoE they tend STILL be melee range. Being able to offscreen a target has HUGE value in certain cases. Also spells can shotgun, something which attacks cannot do - so GMP actually increases damage output if you are close enough to shotgun, on attacks it lowers it (projectile attacks - the few that exist). While multistrike just gives you 2x more attackspeed but you still have to attack 3 times every attack then - which makes it slower than what GMP/LMP has (attack once - 3 hits fly out).

EDIT: spells also have scaling through things like righteous fire - they can make very interesting builds happen.

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Aelloon wrote:

"

thinkingofaname wrote:

Oh to the guy complaining about cost of good weapons. Similar wands cost just as much if not more, and check out the price of good ES gears while your at it.

Really? Maybe you should play the game in a real league before complaining about something like this. Honestly, casters have it so much better in terms of cost for what they're going to run. A Doon Cuebiyari costs like 3 exalteds on Nemesis - you can run a pretty strong strength build on that and the mace would give you good synergy with iron will - end up at like 300%+ increased spell damage.

Since you're stacking strength your survivability will be ridiculous too if you make a decent build. Damage will be average - the main strength of it is the survivability.

Complaints about mana management: everybody has mana management issues. Melee characters tend to not be near int nodes and tend to lack that - their base mana will be lower, much lower than casters. Mana Leech does not allow you to run multiple % auras without quite a few reservation reduction nodes regardless of your reduced mana level because your pool will be too low. If you want to do that you're going to run a blood magic gem. It is true that a caster would have to socket in life leech too, but their damage output tends to scale less with available links than with melee physical scaling - you need quite a few gems to actually get to these high damage numbers.

But most of all you guys seem to be forgetting - the high damage numbers tend to be on SINGLE TARGET abilities and not AoE. And even if they are AoE they tend STILL be melee range. Being able to offscreen a target has HUGE value in certain cases. Also spells can shotgun, something which attacks cannot do - so GMP actually increases damage output if you are close enough to shotgun, on attacks it lowers it (projectile attacks - the few that exist). While multistrike just gives you 2x more attackspeed but you still have to attack 3 times every attack then - which makes it slower than what GMP/LMP has (attack once - 3 hits fly out).

EDIT: spells also have scaling through things like righteous fire - they can make very interesting builds happen.

i really don't get the argument that "melee characters aren't near int nodes so they need lower mana costs"

witches too aren't close to str nodes and they need the health, so what? do we give witches more life just so they don't need to pick it up themselves?

stats should offer benefits:

getting more int as a melee? easier mana managment
getting more int as a caster? requirement due to insane mana costs.

imo:
mana should be completly scraped off int, and int should gain something like spell damage or something, and the spell's costs should drop down to attacks level (which means close to 5 times lower at lvl 20 gem)

as far as lmp/gmp, not all spells can use it, while on the other hand there isn't a single melee skill that can't benefit from at least one of: multistrike/more physical/more physical on full life/weapon elemental damage

huge passive life leech through talents and gear along with instant loh makes attackers erally really durable, especially since it seems like every mob that isn't ranged or given a gap closer is insanly fast, making kiting almost pointless.

and every single attack can be made aoe with melee splash, add in attacks like reave that stretch as far as half a screen with some aoe passives/supports, add attacks like LA, ST, etc and you can't really call attackers "close range".

and RF is gimmicky as it is atm, a skill that is unuable till you are level 70 and have all the fire resists/regen/etc to sustain it and it is 100% useless before then.

BUT

RF is a good example of an easy fix: make the damage scale: starting off at something like 4-5% of max health at lvl 1 and reaching it's current 90% at lvl 20.

then casters could use a lvl1 RF for the 40% more spell damage with a cost similar (actually a lot higher but managable) to blood rage

edit:
mana was actually a benefit BEFORE 1.0.0
aura change actually demolished the actual advantage of a huge mana pool which was multiple auras. Yet, casters who were relying on that huge benefit got nothing in return. I'm in favor of % base auras, i believe it was a good change, BUT casters NEED to get something in return.
Even if that something is something gimmicky like a 200% support gem that adds 40-60% MORE spell damage, at least they could run it with a huge mana pool...

+1 OP

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Aelloon wrote:

Really? Maybe you should play the game in a real league before complaining about something like this. Honestly, casters have it so much better in terms of cost for what they're going to run. A Doon Cuebiyari costs like 3 exalteds on Nemesis - you can run a pretty strong strength build on that and the mace would give you good synergy with iron will - end up at like 300%+ increased spell damage.

Since you're stacking strength your survivability will be ridiculous too if you make a decent build. Damage will be average - the main strength of it is the survivability.

Missed topic... the topic is ES-Casters. I doubt that a char with 300% Spelldamage with Doon and Iron Will would have enough ES to survive.

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But most of all you guys seem to be forgetting - the high damage numbers tend to be on SINGLE TARGET abilities and not AoE. And even if they are AoE they tend STILL be melee range. Being able to offscreen a target has HUGE value in certain cases. Also spells can shotgun, something which attacks cannot do - so GMP actually increases damage output if you are close enough to shotgun, on attacks it lowers it (projectile attacks - the few that exist). While multistrike just gives you 2x more attackspeed but you still have to attack 3 times every attack then - which makes it slower than what GMP/LMP has (attack once - 3 hits fly out).

EDIT: spells also have scaling through things like righteous fire - they can make very interesting builds happen.

Also Reave is AoE, Leap Slam is AoE, Spectral Throw is kinda AoE and even Melee Splash doesn't suffer so bad with insane Skills like Dual Strike or Heavy Strike.

Also GMP has insane Mana-Costs and you need to be really near to shotgun. Being near something isn't exactly the position your character is designed for and normally a ES-Caster would try not to be in that situation. LMP is still reasonable, since you can make 2 projectiles hit from a very safe distance. But than again this only works for fireball and freezing-pulse. Also note that Lightning-Arrow can Shotgun two by hitting 3 targets next to each other and spreading the damage to the other 2 and for a single target they don't have to shotgun, since there are simply strong enough single-target spells. A witch does not have a single spell aimed at killing individual targets, so do get a good single-target dps she actually relies on shotgunning enemies.

int needs to give flat ES

+1 OP

8k ES CI melee witch reporting in

i started a witch to try the storm call and now she is level 42 now

but i feel that she cannot compare with my ST scion build.. and not even close
my ST scion can range/melee/facetank most of the mob..kill them in 3 sec
while caster has to hit-and-run.. and the Dps is much lower than ST build.. if 3 mobs attack me at the same time, I am nearly dead

so I finally back to my scion.. sorry witch

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Free2Pay wrote:

The gameplay is clearly skewed towards melee. You are expected to have the health pool and armor/evasion of a melee class to take any kind spike damage in this game. This is made worst by making meaningful Energy shield armor the hardest roll in the game. High energy shield with 5L/6L with the correct colors slots? It's only possible if you take a nap and dream about it. Or you made a melee class FIRST, take it to the highest level and pass any useful gear you find to the witch. Any ranged advantage caster is supposedly to have is overshadowed with spectral throw (green gem) and lightning strike (red gem), and most support gems just outright perform better for those skills. To add salt to wound, add multistrike and Life gain on hit augment melee survivability. Caster spell scaling is out of whack compared to melee once you hit merciless. A good 2H weapon drop for melee is an immediate dps boost and they are more common and good caster weapons. Good roll on wands and daggers? Again take a nap and dream.

The caster nightmare would any mob with allies reflect elemental damages, added health, energy shield mobs, lightning thorns, undying, and last if not least REGEN mob where the dps benchmark to take it down is set to....(take a guess).

You are wrong - Energy Shield is well used by melee characters as well.
And is you use life, you cant go path of physical damage! You go path of LIFE, LIFE and MOOOOOOREEEE life because life as all that matters.

Who cares about ES. The problem with spellcasters are the scaling for endgame contents
and survivability.

If u want dps, u need to focus on spell crit, which will make u squishy most of the time.
Spells scale horribly unless you get a 2h staff with +3 gem roll with lvl 3 empower
which is only available in Standard and will cost few hundred exalts. Ofcourse
you need some other good rolls on that staff like spell crit and faster cast.

The problem with this is that staves are one of the hardest to craft. Compared to
melee weapons, it gives shitty scaling and is 10times harder to craft a useful staff.

Even if u had a good staff, you need to spend a lot on crit nodes that will make
him very squishy most of the times. U have to spend 2 times more on crit nodes to even
make it viable (40%+ crit chance) since spells mostly have low base crit chance (4~6%, most
of em 4%).

Only crits are viable with spells and elemental spell nodes are complete waste compared
to melee nodes. Melee physical nodes normally give 10~12% on basic nodes and upto 30%
for big nodes. Compare that to 6%~10% for elemental damage. Spell damages without
empower and +3 gems are already low compared to melee weapons, but it further lowers
their scaling with these shitty nodes. Only way possible to scale for endgame is crit.


Considering all this, you can spend 1/10 of what spellcasters need and make a much better
melee build that can run endgame contents much easier. No point playing spellcaster
unless you have tons of money / bored with melee / loves spells. I'm not saying melee is op but more of spellcasters being horrible right now. I didn't even go into support gems
which is also horrible for spellcasters compared to melee.