Quark,Jul 16 2005, 07:46 AM Wrote:A respec, a patch, and a hotfix (resistance) have skyrocketed Warlocks to the top.
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You sure its just the hotfix? Warlocks have been getting obscene crits since before such fixes and patches. SM/Ruin has been a cookie cutter platform from which +mag dmg have greatly benefitted from, showing off displaying ever higher crits and base damage.
Are you sure its not simply the fact your locks have discovered and begun acquiring +dmg equip and the path to destructive power?
I'll restate its easier to direclty improve to PvE spell damage. You said yourself you can only aqcuire 4 weapons better than your current, and that's what I expected. However its fairly easy to acquire a multitude of +spell damage items one by one, which directly improves caster damage.
Quote:You must be kidding yourself if Lissa is ready to compare himself to Sommli. You know, Tahapenes in all blue gear while Sommli has half epics.
I am not familiar with your Stormrage characters, so no real comment on your individual rogues/locks. However, epic set items for warlocks do not necessarily greatly increase lock damage. There are certain individual purple pieces which are fantastic. Some green/blue items improve caster damage far more than purple, while sacrificing in stats a bit. Take shyshroud leggings for example, its about +34 magical damage, which transltes to about +30 damage to a shadow bolt. Relative increase to base shadowbolt of 400-450 damage... 8% increase to damage per bolt. Meanwhile some of the pve epic items only add +7-9 damage vs greens or blues that may add 20-30 each. So in terms of adding damage, greens and blues can be far superior to epic. You don't need purple items to get a lot of +damage increase.
Quote:You could do what Mages have been forced to do since level 1 grouped - be smart about casting and ramp up damage as allowed.
I won't be doing sustained dps if I must hold back due to hate concerns. With ruin, I'd be jumping past the hate curve by leaps and bounds then I won't be contributing steady dps, and lowering my overall damage contribution if I must wait for hate to build again. I do my best sustained damage if I stay behind the hate curve, and crits just skyrocket me ahead in hate already as it is. I keep behind the hate curve without Ruin.
Still, I need to learn how well MD / Ruin works with an imp. Its unimproved damage, and 20% less threat. However, given I've pulled aggro with MD imp and no ruin... I don't have much faith with ruin.
Quote:Of course, all this is academic until I see more comparisons between our like-equipped players. This was only one comparison, and though I believe it to be true, it'd be stupid to make it gospel. Hence the request, we just haven't had time yet.
Just don't get your pants twisted if you find out greens and blues contribute more to damage than purples do. Personally, I've made a fine tuned collection of +dmg items for when I want to output as much steady damage as I can and in the time available--and some greens to do that in place of blues or even purple items.
Don't get upset at UBRS raid damage either, honestly 15 players make mincemeat against a 15k health enemy. Just 5 players contributing just 1-2k damage each over the course of 5 seconds (not unreasonable) means the mob is 1/3 to 2/3 dead. Locks won't do too shabby, but they aren't unlocking their potential either. Face an enemy with 70k-100k health, and you begin to see locks getting big crits off each other's shadow vulnerability and mages benefitting from the CoEl debuff. Locks might not even have time to put on CoS when the enemy mob dies in 10 seconds or less. 5 or less, almost definitely not.