TOPIC: Last Second Changes Made - Sorry! FINAL Contact Sheets

In as much as the tokens are now truly final and the Wizard Class Card is yet to be designed, I suggest you create a new Wizard Class Design thread.

Dave wrote:

NightGod wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote:

OrionW wrote:
...snip...

Until we see that actual Wizard cards and the more detailed rules for the Legendary I am hesitant to comment, but with that said I have a question:

Should we be comparing a 1/game fighter combo that may or may not crit with a Wizard who can reset to full power with either an item (Gem of Last Hope) or a Cleric ability and do it again?

The analysis that two Wizards can do 500 damage in one round to two monsters (assuming the existence of a 40 point non-slide AoE spell) relied on:
1. Both Wizards exhausting a 1/game Ring of Spell Storing.
2. Both Wizard exhausting a 1/game cast of the theoretical 40 point non-slide AoE spell.

So both combos are 1/game.

The Fighter combo, after this, loses very little, they can keep doing this all day long and go down to 70% hit 20% crit on the HF (except for the new rooms where they can reslide 1/room for better values), and 70% hit, 10% crit, 10% triple crit on the DF.

The Wizards, on the other hand are now at 1 HP, don't have a way to cast 2 spells in a round, and need a to either start getting Restore Spell or Crown of Expertise to do a less effective burst with only 1 spell cast a second time. They also need to be burning ~$30 consumables that require a standard action to apply, or they need now full coordination from cleric and or druid classes as well to recharge their HP.

The Wizard Combos are definitely not once per game, like the Fighter example that you give, because the Wizards can do double spell casting and full MEC (assuming healing between rooms) at the start of every combat room via Cabal Bonus plus double spells for a second round in the Boss room via Ring of Spell Storing. Damage in the first round would range from 668 using best spells to 405 using only 0 level spells with Cabal Bonus. In Infernal Redoubt, the Wizards would be able to kill all monsters before the Final Room in the first round, and the two Final Room Boss monsters in 2 rounds (with plenty of damage left over). The Wizards don't even need healing after the first round in the final room to kill the two Boss monsters, they can do it without any additional 2nd round MEC damage. No healing within rooms is required for the Wizards to kill every monster in earlier rooms in one round and the Boss monsters in two rounds.

The Wizard 40 point area attack spell (given Jeff's statement that spell damages are doubling) isn't once per game like the Fighter ability. The Wizard can also cast it via Ring of Spell Storing and Crown of Expertise, getting three castings per game. I'm not counting Cleric Restore Spell on this or Cleric Restore Power for the Fighter, to make it an even comparison.

The Wizard is also not limited to just one round of double-spell casting from the Ring of Spell Storing, they can also double-spell cast once per room via the Cabal Set (3-4 additional double-castings per game).
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Detailed Analysis:
The two round estimate based on the 110 HP level, and the Cleric healing after round one. Removing the Cleric healing after round one reduces the two round total from 1116 to 960, which is still enough to kill both Boss Monsters

Cast Lightning Storm (Elf Wizard Fireball) for 40 points, add 35 bonus spell damage, channel MEC for 109 points, for 184 damage.
Cast via Ring of Spell Storing Lightning Storm (Elf Wizard Fireball) for 40 points and 35 bonus spell damage for 75 points of damage.
Combining those two, each Wizard can do 259 points of damage in the first turn. With both Wizards, you're looking at 518 points of damage in just the first round of combat, and that doesn't require the Wizard Class Relic or Legendary, just the MEC. 160 points of that would be damage to all monsters while 358 damage is pool damage. Adding in the 160 damage to the second monster gets it to 668 damage in round one.

First round after Wizards cast, Cleric casts Full heal from Relic on one Wizard plus Cure Serious Wounds as instant action on the other Wizard (24 +25 healing bonus). One Wizards are back to 109 HP, the other to 50 HP.

Second Round: Wizard casts Lightning Storm via Crown of Expertise for 184 damage (40 plus 35 bonus damage plus 109 MEC damage) and Ray of Shock FA via Cabal Set Bonus for 71 damage (36 plus 35 bonus damage) for 255 damage total.
Elf Wizard casts Ray of Shock for 121 damage (36 plus 35 bonus damage plus 50 MEC damage) plus Fireball via Cabal Set Bonus & Crown of Expertise for 75 damage (40 plus 35 bonus damage) for a total of 196 damage.
Adding in no bonus damage for a 2nd monster because it's already dead, the Wizards do an additional 451 damage in round 2. That is a total of 1119 damage in the two rounds, only 160 of which is due to damage to a second monster. If it were a room with just a single monster, the total damage would still be 959 in two rounds.

Further, even without any healing after the first round (which would subtract the 159 MEC 2nd Round damage), the two Wizards could kill both Boss Monsters with 960 damage (it only takes 900 on Nightmare to kill both)
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To further address the one shot wonder comment, even in a room with only casting 0 Level lesser spells, the first round using Cabal (since Ring of Spell Storing was saved for the major combat) could look like this:

Wizard casts Fire Dart for 156 damage (12 plus 35 bonus damage plus 109 MEC damage) and Fire Dart FA via Cabal Set Bonus for 47 damage (12 plus 35 bonus damage) for 203 damage total.
Elf Wizard casts Shocking Grasp for 156 damage (12 plus 35 bonus damage plus 109 MEC damage) plus Shocking Grasp FA via Cabal Set Bonus for 47 damage (12 plus 35 bonus damage) for a total of 203 damage.
The Wizards combined do 403 damage, which is twice as much as needed to kill the Room 2 Snake Fiend on Nightmare Mode, and enough to kill the Fire Fiend in Room 5.

Summary: The Wizards could do between 405 in the 4th best room and 668 in the best room in the first round of every combat room in the Dungeon, partly because of the doubling of spell damage but primarily from being able to use MEC on every single spell. In Infernal Redoubt, the Wizards without any damage from any other party members would be able to kill the Room 2 and 5 monsters in one round and the two Final Boss Monsters in two rounds. This does assuming healing in-between rooms, but between the Cleric, Druid and Paladin there is easily enough group healing to do that even without using consumables.

Please post a build with 110 HP and 35 spell bonus, that equips all the spell feee action items or spell restoring items your scenario requires.

Please indicate if your analysis requires the use of bardsong and at what level.

Please indicate if this build has room for 3 treasure iouns and a treasure charm.

I'm definitely interested in this, too. I'm far from a BIS wizard, but even the "Hypotehtical max" character someone made a day or so ago to show what maxed out wizard HP could look like was 91HP and 29 Spell Damage (if you included the new 10hp stone and 7th tooth), didn't include RoSS or the new epic, no key of healing, no shirt of linked healing, involved multiple volunteer tokens and only had room for CoA for TEs. And don't get me started on the saves.

And, now that MEC is always 1:1 , that character it outdated since losing spell damage for HP no longer makes sense.

I think I've got it, but you need to dump the Cabal Set and the Charm of Spell Swapping. With a little finagling I can get to 109 hp with 36 spell damage

Head - Crown of Expertise
Eyes - Lenses of Focus
Left Ear - Earcuff of Inspiration
Right Ear - Earcuff of Orbits
Neck - Ashenne's Arch-Mage Medallion
Armor - Aron's Sunhide Robe
Wrists - Charm Bracelets
Hands - Blessed Tempest Gloves
Mainhand - Drake's +5 Staff of Focus
Missile Weapon - Thor's +5 Returning Hammer of Smiting
Back - Cloak of the Elm
Left Ring - Relsa's Ring of Supreme Focus
Right Ring - Ring of Spell Storing
Third Ring - Ring of Greater Focus
Waist - Arcane Belt
Shirt - Shirt of Focus
Boots - Boots of the Four Winds
Legs - Kilt of Dungeonbane (Con)
Shin - Flameguard Greaves
Bead - Master Ale Drinker's Bead
Charm 1 - Charm of Avarice
Charm 2 - Charm of Awakened Synergy (assume entire party has it)
Charm 3 - Charm of Glory
Charm 4 - Greater Garnet Charm
Charm 5 - Garnet Charm

Ioun 1 - Gold Nugget
Ioun 2 - Silver Nugget
Ioun 3 - Platinum Nugget
Ioun 4 - Banshee Prism
Ioun 5 - Elfstone Shard
Ioun 6 - Charming Cabochon
Ioun 7 - Garnet Cube (or Elfstone Shard)
Specials (that impact stats)
Semi-Lich Skull & 7 individual teeth
Rod of Seven Parts Complete
Gregor's Tome of Focus
Totem Paint Crushed Ruby
Elixir of Vitality

The app (without 2021 tokens) tells me I'm at 88hp and 32 damage
I get 4 more damage from Earcuff of Inspiration to take damage to 36
I get the following additional hp
+1 for using the app (not included in total)
+10 for Elfstone Shard
+10 for Master Ale Drinker's Bead since I'm on an odd constitution number
That should get me to 109. I could throw in a Yew Runestone if I had more and go to 110hp

Edwin, if you swap in the Cabal set, how much damage bonus and/or HP do you lose? I can redo my analysis based on that. I want it to be accurate. Thanks!

Mike Steele wrote:

Endgame wrote:

Arcanist Kolixela wrote: also it's worth remembering that Jeff said he wants Wizards to be top DPS. Why are you looking at ways to nerf Wizard damage when it's Jeff's design intent for them to outdamage Monks and Rangers?

Because the better solution may be to nerf monk and ranger damage than to create a large gulf between wizard, monk, and ranger vs everyone else.

I'm 100% in favor of changing Monk & Ranger character cards so the the bonus melee damage is only applied to one slider instead of both. They would still have a slight advantage in that if one slider misses, the other still gets the bonus. If that isn't changed, every token that increases melee damage just widens the gap between Monk & Ranger and the other melee classes,because they potentially get double the bonus from each.

I was planning on starting a discussion about this in another thread, but was thinking about refraining until this wizard stuff was sorted out.

Arcanist Kolixela wrote: Rangers and Monks can average 140+ damage per round each without crit...

Can someone link me a monk build that does this damage? I'm trying to build a "max" monk build and can't get close to this number on non-crits. I'm somewhere around 112 and I am making a LOT of reckless equipment choices:
tdcharactercreator.com/#/character/edit/37aac673-bbf7-4be9-9859-f3025bb7dc62

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In short, there has to be a better design change than a heavy-handed nerf to removing the 2nd puck bonus damage from dual sliders. It would reduce the output of UR+ monks by 30%-40%, which puts them behind every 2-handed build. If all my 2nd puck does is add 7-10 damage on average then why am I bothering to perform the hardest sliding mechanic?

I do believe there is a long term scaling issue that needs to be addressed for the dual sliders. If Jeff decides a design change is in order, I would be interested in discussing potential options such as the ones listed below.

These are meant to be separate design adjustments to be considered, not all of them combined together:

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Enhanced 2-handed attacking:
2-handed attacks gain an additional +1 damage for each 2 points of strength. Basically, +2 strength = +1/+2 for melee +to-hit / +damage bonuses when attacking with a 2-handed melee weapon.

We have seen melee damage bonus tokens designed around 2-handed weapons (Bracers of Reckless Fury, Boots of the East Wind). Limiting access to strength is difficult to do and it currently benefits dual sliders twice. This would change that imbalance, at least for those that choose to equip and use a 2-hander.

Dual sliders are happy they aren't hit with the nerf hammer. 2-handed attacks get buffed. Might be the least painful.

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Reduced crits:
Dual slider critical hits double the weapon wheel damage only.

Pretty simple. It's a nerf, but it doesn't hurt as much as fully dropping the 2nd puck bonus damage.

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Class redesign for Monk:
This honestly doesn't belong here. I'll eventually make a post in the monk thread.

• 2nd puck does not get melee damage bonus by default.
• Add a resource: Ki, with a resource pool. 4 Ki pool for level 4 monks. 5 Ki pool for level 5.
• Improved Evasion, Deflect missiles, and Feather Fall require 1 Ki to activate.
• Drop Dragon Strike because I don't think it does anything anymore, was confusing, forgotten by a fair share of DMs when it was relevant, and ultimately out of the hands of the monk player.
• Add Enhanced Ki Strikes: 2nd puck gets melee bonus damage. Costs 1 Ki.
• Revisit Gloves of the Flying Fist to require 1 Ki to use.
• Revisit Relic to add 1 Ki to pool.
• Revisit Legendary to add 2 Ki to pool. Chucking weapons with legendary remains without Ki cost (but 2nd puck doesn't have bonus damage without activating Enhanced Ki Strikes)

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Again, there has to be a better design change than a heavy-handed nerf to removing the 2nd puck bonus damage from dual sliders.

my mistake, with your build is 118 damage at no HP cost.

Always taking away the magic.....

First thing I noticed was that the rare Scroll of Holy Fire seems under powered to the point of being misprinted. 1 point of party healing and 1 pt of monster damage seem like placeholder values that never got updated. I would think those should be bumped up to the 3-5 range for each. Otherwise this would be a pretty disappointing rare to find in a pack, especially as a new player.
Also there seems to be a shortage of weapons, there isn't even a rare two handed melee weapon for a barbarian to use with their amulet which struck me as odd.
This is a minor point but the Uncommon Dwarven Death Axe doesn't look like an axe, instead its some kind of super goofy scythe that looks impossible to wield. I would say change the picture or the name to match better.

I don't know that I haven much to add to the Wizard discussion, damage output at the top most end has completely outstripped the combat challenge of Nightmare for a long time. I just think that the concept of a "glass cannon" inherently involves a risk/reward trade off but the structure of the game is such that there is no trade off for these high alpha damage Wiz builds. We're looking at situations where the monsters get one shoted and thus there is not really any return fire to worry about. I don't think we really want to end up in an Angel Summoner vs. BMX Bandit situation.

Wade Schwendemann (Dr. Uid) wrote: Ok, serious question here.

How does discussing hypothetical damage outputs on classes where powers aren't defined and class cards are about to be re-done actually help anything?

Why does damage output of one class vs. another matter at all? If you want to be the best damage dealer there is, play Monk (or soon, Wizard). It is a team game. If I'm playing Paladin, I know that my guarding the wizards often means we don't get attacked, leaving them to channel HP into spells.

If we kill the monster in 1 or 2 rounds, we all participated. Are there bragging rights in some parties that we just don't have in mine? That seems kind of annoying honestly.

If someone is overgeared for their difficulty level and doesn't tone it down, that would take a LOT of the fun out of it for me.

I guess people (this is not aimed at any one person) just like the debate?

Anyhow /rant

This is spot on, it really bugs me when people (again no finger pointing) jump in and get QoL improvements nerfed because "reasons". If someone doesn't actively play the class and understand whats stressful, fun, not fun, they are not really helping anyone. If you are high geared, you are more than likely picking your groups (if your strolling into a normal PUG and one-shotting things shame on you). So it doesn't really matter if someone out there can out dps someone else.

I would also be shocked to know how anyone is actually competing with others in terms of DPS, aside form the occasion, whooh! big hit by the x character doing x damage and lopping off its head! in my experience is rare that you are given hit feedback from the DM as is, and getting that takes more time.

Very often i'm seeing people call for nerfs which in my opinion are simply to retain value in tokens they purchased, which is a whole other can of worms.

I would really like to see a breakdown from Jeff on what type of feedback is useful, what considerations we should be looking into, and how certain things influence the decisions. That way we can try to better stick to facts and cut down on emotions.

Philip Goodman wrote: I am making a LOT of reckless equipment choices:

This is the best thing I've read all day

I think one of the issues with VTD is you actually get to hear someone call out their crits and damage totals...and going down the alphabetical list you can see the barbarian go first...if it kills the monster in o e hit everyone else keeps their actions.

Adam Guay wrote: I think one of the issues with VTD is you actually get to hear someone call out their crits and damage totals...and going down the alphabetical list you can see the barbarian go first...if it kills the monster in o e hit everyone else keeps their actions.

One thing our DMs were doing in VTD was to start the next combat where the previous one left out. Helped balance out the number of turns everyone got. It's worth asking the DM to do.

Yeah I think our dm added a 5x or more multiplier...still never had a combat go over 3 rounds.

Philip Goodman wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Endgame wrote:

Arcanist Kolixela wrote: also it's worth remembering that Jeff said he wants Wizards to be top DPS. Why are you looking at ways to nerf Wizard damage when it's Jeff's design intent for them to outdamage Monks and Rangers?

Because the better solution may be to nerf monk and ranger damage than to create a large gulf between wizard, monk, and ranger vs everyone else.

I'm 100% in favor of changing Monk & Ranger character cards so the the bonus melee damage is only applied to one slider instead of both. They would still have a slight advantage in that if one slider misses, the other still gets the bonus. If that isn't changed, every token that increases melee damage just widens the gap between Monk & Ranger and the other melee classes,because they potentially get double the bonus from each.

I was planning on starting a discussion about this in another thread, but was thinking about refraining until this wizard stuff was sorted out.

Arcanist Kolixela wrote: Rangers and Monks can average 140+ damage per round each without crit...

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In short, there has to be a better design change than a heavy-handed nerf to removing the 2nd puck bonus damage from dual sliders. It would reduce the output of UR+ monks by 30%-40%, which puts them behind every 2-handed build. If all my 2nd puck does is add 7-10 damage on average then why am I bothering to perform the hardest sliding mechanic?

Lots of good insight here, but I dropped some for space reasons.

I think there's a difference between VTD and Sliding TD. In the second, there's a degree of dexterity involved for dual wielders that balances some of it out. So some of this is reaction to VTD numbers?

When I've read about the no bonus on 2nd puck I always thought of it that the monk would get the damage on whichever puck they want (after seeing the results - the one that hit, the crit, etc). Does that alleviate some of the concern?