Why pure caster is unplayable on late game comparing to physical damage

Nova sorc :) If only shock nova didn't have a stupid deadzone. zzzz

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Plastic_Cup wrote:

Im a level 76 self caster in Invasion, I out dps everybody I group with and I am tankier than most of them, I don't see the problem.

Arc sucks. (only because of how it works)
Arctic Breath sucks.

Everything else is viable and you can do plenty of dmg and be plenty tanky.

I call bullshit on that, seriously. I bet you only play low level maps or group with clueless people. Theirs no way a selfcaster can compete with a discharge or CoC build if both have the same gear. Its out of the question, my discharger can solo lvl 75 maps with 6 player health fast like really fast can your selfcaster do the same? I bet not. Tankiness? I guess you dont group with max block aegis players or similar builds. You have crappy HP with some armor, like under 10k or tons of ES and no armor as selfcaster, can you stand in a lvl 73+ mob group for a min without doing anything and not die? I guess not, you are not tanky. Selfcasters cant be really tanky because you dont have much passive points left after all those elemental, crit, crit multi and spelldamage nodes that you need to do actually some damage.

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Sa_Re wrote:

My Flameblaster is doing fine, too. Can't compete with Shavs+CoE builds but my items are cheaper.

A 5 link searing touch cost 3x on ambush, a discharger or CoC does way more damage with gear worth 3ex. Its delusional to believe a selfcaster is better than any other way to cast.

It's funny because a lot of the problems seem to have to do with the mechanics of spellcasting.

Meaning the interaction between:

1) Elemental damage applied
2) Mana leech
3) Life leech

But if you read the threads about the leech changes, there's an outspoken group who seems to think it's "fine" for casters, not realizing that their very weakness comes from the interaction between these mechanics.

But then you read other threads, like this, and people talk about how weak casters are.

This is a very bizarre forum.

Physical damage dealers, specifically attackers, get a "free ride" as far as leech is concerned.

Being forced to stack mana regen to sustain spells is one of the core reasons that spellcasting is weak. If physical attackers had to do that, it would cripple their builds.

Then there's the group who seems to think that spellcasting has to be "fundamentally different" from attacking and draw from different mechanics.

They seem to think this "fundamental difference" means it should be hard as shit to build a self caster, and easy as shit to build a physical attacker.

I just can't agree with this shenanigans. Spells and attacks are different because they have different bonuses and support gems available.

Spellcasting doesn't need to be nearly impossible and horrifically bad compared to physical attacking just so it can be "different."

I was going to build a freezing pulser in Ambush, but just couldn't be fucked to do so. Compared to a ST character, the FPer:

1) Is less effective
2) Requires better gear
3) Has huge mana problems
4) Requires a lot more wasted nodes eg mana (ST character requires Mind Drinker -- DONE)

There's always blood magic I guess...Cough...

Iv played something like 2 dozen spell based builds and ill admit, if you arent heavily invested into crit they do very weak damage compared to a quick attacks build. With the possible exception of a high quality firestorm + inc duration + fire pen + conc effect (and the extra duration cluster).
This doesnt mean they are unplayable though. I think it just highlights how OP bonus damage and fast weapons are. Melee are getting spoiled right now. I expect some sort of nerf to 'added x damage' mods on gear/auras soon. Something like 'added x damage' scaling inversely to your attacks per second.
And everyone will bitch and complain about how melee will become "UNPLAYABLE" when they cant do 40k dps.

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Sa_Re wrote:

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Plastic_Cup wrote:

Im a level 76 self caster in Invasion, I out dps everybody I group with and I am tankier than most of them, I don't see the problem.

My Flameblaster is doing fine, too. Can't compete with Shavs+CoE builds but my items are cheaper.

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Plastic_Cup wrote:

Arc sucks. (only because of how it works)

It does not, proper Arc builds are very strong.

Sa_Re read my posts in this topic. You dont see problem because you didnt saw anything playing alone if you saying everything is fine. Like i wrote in post before show me self-caster wining with Dominus and how fast you doing areas ? i bet any melee or ranger is much faster and could concentrate on killing not watching life bar. First compare builds ( lvl, effective, pleasure of play, gear, time to create,). True is spells should be much more effective becasue self-caster idea is not a tank but dps on grups and range. Melee should be powerfull on single target and when start close combat with caster should have more chance to win. And now i can just fallow mellee players with leap and whirling blades silly lighting warp dont even close to speed of those skills. With actual speed of cast spell they already kills most of mobs with area damage before i even shot with spell...

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SkyCore wrote:

I expect some sort of nerf to 'added x damage' mods on gear/auras soon. Something like 'added x damage' scaling inversely to your attacks per second.
And everyone will bitch and complain about how melee will become "UNPLAYABLE"

The reason why people would bitch is because it's not what they are asking for.

That's how Blizzard does balance and people play PoE to get away from that company.

Most recent example: there was a high difficulty mode called "Torment" and the community was complaining that it wasn't rewarding enough to play that difficulty versus just doing an easier difficulty and just clearing faster.

So what did they do? They removed a bunch of drops from the easier difficulties and made it so they only drop in Torment.

Everybody flipped out, because that's not what was asked for.

When people say "this option sucks" they don't mean "make this option the gold standard and bring everything else down to this level."

And if you're concerned about power creep, I think selfcasters are the least of your problems......

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Veruski wrote:

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SkyCore wrote:

I expect some sort of nerf to 'added x damage' mods on gear/auras soon. Something like 'added x damage' scaling inversely to your attacks per second.
And everyone will bitch and complain about how melee will become "UNPLAYABLE"

The reason why people would bitch is because it's not what they are asking for.

That's how Blizzard does balance and people play PoE to get away from that company.

Most recent example: there was a high difficulty mode called "Torment" and the community was complaining that it wasn't rewarding enough to play that difficulty versus just doing an easier difficulty and just clearing faster.

So what did they do? They removed a bunch of drops from the easier difficulties and made it so they only drop in Torment.

Everybody flipped out, because that's not what was asked for.

When people say "this option sucks" they don't mean "make this option the gold standard and bring everything else down to this level."

And if you're concerned about power creep, I think selfcasters are the least of your problems......

It pains me to admit blizzard was right about something after ruining the diablo franchise, but they were right. That nerf is exactly what was needed. People just dont want to be nerfed. Despite it being in the best interest of the game, and despite it objectively adding better balance to the risk/reward formula.
People are miniscule little things with subjective perception. Ready to lash out at anything which doesnt favor them personally.
As for 'what was asked for': I find that more often than not, when people 'want' something. Its often not exactly what they describe. Its often some deeper thing. Satisfying the true deeper issue is the correct course, but 'limited people' cant see that.

What's in the best interest of a game is to maintain a happy and growing playerbase.

If you do what's in "the best interest" of the game, and it causes everybody to ragequit and leave, then I can't really agree that it was a good idea.

Balance is moot if nobody is playing your game.

It's not enjoyable to build a character in PoE that takes 15 nodes and mana regen on every single piece of gear just to cast spells and do less damage than everybody else.

You're saying everybody should have to make that kind of investment. I don't agree with that vision of attacking and casting spells in an ARPG.

The skill tree becomes really un-fun when there's so many "mandatory" nodes. If every build requires 15 mandatory mana nodes, then you have:

20 - 35 mandatory life or ES nodes, depending on how tanky you want to be, whether you are hardcore/standard, etc
30 - 40 stat nodes
10+ mana nodes
5 - 15 misc. survive nodes

so by the time you even get to start making decisions about how you want to approach your "optional" nodes, you already have 65+ nodes accounted for...

I'm not saying there should be no mandatory nodes. Every ARPG maintains baselines for characters. However, when this number of mandatory nodes grows to be too high a percentage of the total nodes, it stops being fun to build a character.

Lots of people seem to be confusing this thread discussion with 'melee does more dmg than spellcasters'...

The thread title states that casters are 'unplayable' late game, which multiple people had said they don't have an issue with.
Only to be bombarded with messages of "you do no damage compared to melee". "My melee would clear maps quicker than you" blahblahblah...

Well thats not the discussion.

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Zanixx wrote:

Lots of people seem to be confusing this thread discussion with 'melee does more dmg than spellcasters'...

The thread title states that casters are 'unplayable' late game, which multiple people had said they don't have an issue with.
Only to be bombarded with messages of "you do no damage compared to melee". "My melee would clear maps quicker than you" blahblahblah...

Well thats not the discussion.

clearly the discussion is that the weakest option should be the standard.

so take the weakest build in the game, and make every build as weak as that build.

that is, according to some people, the "proper" direection. lol.

basically, it's not that casters are unplayable lategame, it's that everything else is too playable in comparison!

;)

we just need to reduce the playability of all other options....

(hope my sarcasm is detected)