Melee vs range and burst vs sustained do not need to influence DPS spread

[DarthEndonae]

Right now, the DPS ranking roughly goes: Melee DoT > Melee Burst = Ranged DoT > Ranged Burst. The spread is absolutely massive right now as well, the highest parsing spec, Pyro PT does 2k more damage than the lowest parsing spec, Arsenal Merc. That's a 15% difference in damage output! The result is that many specs rarely get used in nightmare raids because so much damage is just given up and often the reason for this spread to exist doesn't even matter or can be handled without needing such a massive spread.

 

Melee vs Range Damage Output

The conventional thinking right now is that melee needs to do more than ranged because melee has gaps to close and can potentially have less uptime while ranged can do DPS all the time. At launch, melee movement was far more restricted and only Warriors and PT tanks had the leap. Now, every single melee class now has access to an instant gap closer ability/leap and a movement speed ability or two like a roll. It's very easy to stay close to your target these days and the removal of channeled and casted abilities has made it easier to stick to moving targets. If damage output for the instant gap closers/leaps was increased to match or even slightly surpass the strong filler (Vicious Slash, Flame Burst, etc.) or kept off the GCD like it basically is for Holotraverse and Phantom Stride (these abilities should not provide a DPS increase via utilities though), there wouldn't (and isn't) much of a DPS loss than there is when a ranged DPS needs to move or otherwise has a cast get interrupted. Target swapping capability further blurs this line, some specs like Lightning Sorc have to put Affliction on whenever they switch to a new target and if that new thing isn't staying alive for very long, it's just as harmful to DPS as having to waste a GCD on a leap.

 

Number of abilities that have 10m range vs 4m also has a massive impact on damage output. PT DPS and Lethality are almost entirely at 10m range and this makes a massive difference in their ability to maintain high uptime, but this is completely ignored in the current spread as those three specs are among the highest parsing in the game likely also because they have the least defensive capabilities (though this will no longer be the case in 6.0, so their DPS should be lowered). Deception is in a similar boat thanks to frequent use of Ball Lightning and Discharge, but that isn't the entire rotation, and Assassin in general is performing the lowest DPS wise.

 

PvP isn't much of a concern either in my opinion since there's a whole host of things that both enable melee to better stick on their targets and ranged to stop gap closers from happening or otherwise escape melee range. This can easily be rebalanced to accommodate equal DPS, likely meaning that ranged would have less escapes or melee have more ways to stick on the ranged.

 

Burst vs Sustained

The conventional thinking is that burst is better than sustained because you get your damage out right now as opposed to later, so something that needs to die quickly will die faster you don't lose DPS when something dies and you still have DoTs ticking and it's harder to mitigate in general and are less hurt by frequent periods of downtime. The biggest issue right now is that this distinction isn't being respected in raids, many of the DoT specs will do just fine in phases that require burst. A classic example is an IO merc being able to do the orb on Calphayus because you have 15 seconds which is the same as a single cycle of IO.

 

Only about half of the classes have a significant distinction between their burst and sustained specs, and yet a lot of room is created in the spread for this distinction. The other specs don't have very much difference and which one to use comes down to preference or smaller differences. On the one hand, this is fine in nightmare raiding because the demands are already high enough that these smaller distinctions can be enough to warrant choosing one over the other without needing the overall damage output to be different. There are ways to further differentiate sustained and burst so their use cases are more separate as they should be so that their distinction makes sense in practice, and many of these traits are present already on at least one of the sustained specs.

 

Longer duration DoTs and dependency on those DoTs are the first thing that needs to happen. Virulence and Lethality are the major examples where this occurs, though it's also relevant for Pyro with Scorch. With both the agent specs, the DoTs last for 24 seconds (and the extra weakened duration for Virulence) and are required to be active in order for the agent to deal any sort of significant damage. 24 seconds is usually too long for most burst windows so Virulence up being pretty unhelpful in those situations but they still need the DoTs to be active which really isn't helpful if something needs to die quickly. It would probably be better to lean more into this effect for ranged DoT specs since they have longer DoTs inherently.

 

Stronger execute (sub 30% damage increases) and a small reduction in above 30 damage output will also help to make sustained specs worse in burst situations because that sub 30 damage increase doesn't work very well over shorter timescales but is very good over longer periods of time like burn phases and will even out in standard fights. Hatred is currently functioning like this and while many specs do have very strong execute windows, they aren't quite as extreme as Hatred where it's almost bad above 30%. They could also throw in a gravely injured state for enemies where the execute damage increase could trigger outside of the sub 30 instances so that DoT specs could still be useful in fights where burn phases happen with the boss above 30% like Brontes burn or Kell Dragon 2. For example, Relentless Ordnance on IO would now say "Increases damage dealt by periodic effects by 30% on targets that are below 30% max health or gravely injured" and the debuff that would appear on the boss would say something like "Gravely Injured - Vulnerable to executions". It would be better to lean into this effect for melee DoT specs since they have shorter duration DoTs.

 

IO

 

IO could easily have the duration for Incendiary Missile and Serrated Shot increased to 30 seconds so they'd only be applied every other cycle like Scorch without disrupting the current rotation at all, those two GCDs would be filled with Power Shot/Rapid shot or DoT applications on secondary targets and their damage would need to be adjusted so that overall DPS doesn't change, maybe only a 50% damage increase instead of a 100%. Since the DoTs would be more powerful per use, the spread could once again require two abilities with Fusion Missile only spreading Incendiary Missile and Explosive Dart only spreading Serrated Shot.There's already a little bit of dependency on the DoTs to be active because of dependency on heat, but this could be taken a step further by moving things around. Right now, Innovative Particle Accelerator finishes the cooldown on Mag Shot and makes it generate no heat when you use Power Shot, Unload, or Sweeping Blasters; the no heat part could require the target to be bleeding. Superheated Shot says if Mag Shot ignores 30% armor and always triggers Combustible Gas Cylinder and when used against a burning target, you vent 5 heat, but all of these effects could require the target to be burning instead of just the heat venting.

 

 

 

Madness

 

Madness needs some tweaking anyway because its DoT duration doesn't line up with the rest of the abilities and it's currently ideal to clip the DoTs, which should never be the case. The rotation now also does not accommodate Volt Rush or its tactical at all. I think it would be wise to put Madness on a 12/24 second cycle where Creeping Terror and Affliction's durations are 24 seconds each accompanied by having them deal 50% more damage so they deal the same per tick as they do now and have Death Field, Demolish, and Force Leech on 12 second cooldowns with damage output rebalanced as needed. Lightning Barrage should either make Force Lightning have a 1.5 or 3 second channel instead of the current non GCD multiple we have now and have damage retooled accordingly. Fulminating Current, Lightning Burns, Parasitism, and Dark Echo could all be limited to only being able to trigger their effects if the target is affected by a periodic damaging ability. Deathmark could provide an additional 5% damage increase to DoTs and that damage could come by reducing the base damage of Leech and/or Death Field. All of this would pave the way for the Volt Rush tactical being possible thanks to more uses of filler. Creeping Death could provide the same damage increase that it does for Hatred where it provides 30% to DoTs, Death Field, and Force Leech at the cost of some above 30% damage.

 

 

 

Vengeance

 

Vengeance could transfer more of its damage to its bleeding effects and have those bleeding effects last longer while keeping the rotation the same so more abilities would work like Shatter and its damage would be more delayed. Impale would do less damage in the initial hit but the Eviscerate DoT would deal more damage and deal that damage over 8 seconds instead of 6. The Savagery proc that currently functions to give Force Scream an autocrit could be changed to apply additional stacks of Draining Scream which would have to deal more damage to cover the loss of the autocrit and the DoT could deal that damage over 8 seconds instead of 6. Bloodmaster could also be reworked to provide a 15% boost to bleed damage per bleed effect but only be sub 30 (math might be wrong there, goal is to transfer damage to execute window).

 

 

Pyro

 

Pyro already has a lot of the nice qualities thanks to Scorch and Burnout, the only thing I would do is transfer a little bit of above 30% damage to Burnout so it'd provide a 15% damage increase instead of 10%. I would also transfer some of the damage dealt by Searing Wave and Immolate to Incendiary Missile and Scorch so the DoTs are a bit stronger and more necessary since Pyro has pretty good burst.

 

 

Annihilation

 

I'm a little less familiar with Annihilation, so I don't feel too comfortable making recommendations beyond increasing the duration of Force Rend to 15 seconds (same as its cooldown) but not the damage it deals so it just takes longer for the damage to go out. The bigger thing for Annihilation will probably be ramp-up, it might be better if ramp-up were more frequent, so less time before Annihilator and Juyo stacks fall off but less stacks to get the same effect. I don't think it's too important either since players will usually choose Carnage if burst is needed anyway since it's so much better at burst.

 

 

Hatred and Engineering

 

Both of these specs are fine as is. Hatred has pretty long DoTs for a melee DPS spec and the insane execute damage is enough to have it be limiting in burst situations. Engineering is already situational enough due to other factors and the decision is more about whether or not to use it over Virulence.

 

 

[ThePsyEagle]

Just answering a few points you mentioned:

- You pointed out Holotraverse as an advantage, but it is the most unreliable skill which gives you actually a disadvantage 50% of the time or more. Usually I either don't move anywhere and just loose a second or I get ported even further away.

- Lethality range = 10m. Lethalities biggest hit is 4m range and one of your TA gaining skills is 4m as well.

Edited September 23, 2019 by ThePsyEagle

[mrphstar]

PvP isn't much of a concern either in my opinion since there's a whole host of things that both enable melee to better stick on their targets and ranged to stop gap closers from happening or otherwise escape melee range. This can easily be rebalanced to accommodate equal DPS, likely meaning that ranged would have less escapes or melee have more ways to stick on the ranged.

 

giving melee more gap closer abilities or reducing the mobility of ranges to compensate your suggested DPS changes in PVP, would ultimatly reverse these changes because this would lead to more uptime for melee and less uptime for range in PVE again.

 

so whats your point exactly?

 

when i last checked, the meta already was merc>sniper>any melee.

why would anyone want to give them even more damage.

 

same goes for DoT vs. Burst.

you cant reduce the gap between DoT and Burst specs because no DoT spec would be viable in PVP anymore (DoT specs are rarely played already anyway).

 

unfortunaly for the most PVE players, balancing is bound to both PVE and PVP. you didnt take that into account while posting these ideas.

Edited September 24, 2019 by mrphstar

[Benirons]

This dps range needs to exist, although how wide exactly is subject to scrutiny.

 

There is no sense in having different DPS specs if they all do the same dmg, cause then the optimal one would be to run burst since they dont rely on dots per say.

 

The only reason IO can kill the orb on caly is because that merc is probably way overgeared in 258s. IO also has a stupid amount of burst with net and supercharge. It should not be possible. Caly in particular is a fight where most dps should be running burst specs because that is what is needed.

 

And tanking nim caly, i routinely see the affliction add almost get its cast off with 2 dot specs (both agent dot specs).