A better fix for combustion / backlash change?

[sterlingray]

Lets just make more risk vs. reward. Let it go past 100%.

50% critical chance 100% crit dmg 50% explosion chance
75% critical chance 125% crit dmg 75% explosion chance for 50% of damage dealt
100% critial chance 150% crit dmg 100% explosion chance for 100% damage dealt
-- anything over this level if BW / sorc dies from explosion / backlash the explosion that kills them does that amount of damage vs anyone in a 15ft radius around them---
100% critial chance 150% crit dmg 100% explosion chance for 150% damage deal
100% critial chance 150% crit dmg 100% explosion chance for 200% damage dealt
and so on.

This would force them to be the ultimate glass cannon. If they dont want to die they get rid of their combustion / dark magic and if they want to sacrifice themselves for the good of the team then by all means go for it.

Also if people think it would be overpowered, could also make it so that if they do explode themselves at the higher level of this ... it incinerates their corpse making a rez impossible. No body left to rez. They gotta run back.

Just an initial solution. Tweak and discuss.

[Shadowstorm]

The line of thinking is good, at least in a 1v1 situation, however that's not the problem BW/Sorcs were facing. Unless a backlash is just a guaranteed insta-death they will continue to run full combustion and just have the healers keep them up. The result is a total lawn mower effect, in which AoE bright wizards cut a swathe through the enemy and leave nothing in their wake.

In other words, the idea only works in a vaccum, not in mass scale fights.

[Blackaxe]

The line of thinking is good, at least in a 1v1 situation, however that's not the problem BW/Sorcs were facing. Unless a backlash is just a guaranteed insta-death they will continue to run full combustion and just have the healers keep them up. The result is a total lawn mower effect, in which AoE bright wizards cut a swathe through the enemy and leave nothing in their wake.

In other words, the idea only works in a vaccum, not in mass scale fights.

A friend of mine and I were kicking this around. We came up with a couple of ideas that would inhibit this a little.

Firstly you could add a debuff that makes the BW resistant to heals while in combustion mode. Essentially this would mean that you're guaranteed to kill yourself if you stay in combustion mode unless some healer is going to dump all their AP into spam healing you. (which would effectively mean your damage is the result of two players direct efforts which would put the whole thing in perspective though i don't know many healers that would do that)

Alternatively you could make each tick of heals count as an extra explosion check so at high combustion levels heals are just likely to make things worse (and HOT are just going to be nasty). This would result in BW having to manage their combustion just to stop the healers from accidentally "killing them with kindness".

Naturally both of these effects would be tied to the level of combustion so if you dump combustion using an ability the effects disappear.

[Smoke and Powder-WHA]

I like these ideas, and they are interesting 'out of the box' approaches.

[Azureal]

As a Bright Wizard that absolutely loves his class, and his killing power on the battlefield, a change must come into play somewhere.

Even though my Bright Wizard kills Tome entry just ticked over 100, combustion itself shouldnt be changed, as it seems to be doing its job just fine :)

I have to admit, I really do support the idea of a self debuff against healing as my combustion rises. The more combustion, the less healing Im likely to get. The less healing, the higher the chance of death. The greater my chance of death perhaps the greater my interest in hitting the Meltdown button, which currently sits on bar 2, as an alt-key. I just never use it in RvR.

[JudgeMentalOne]

I think and have said 2 simple changes are all the BW/Sorc need.

1. Make combustion/DM build up from spell casting only if the spell cast actually hits something. So no building up combustion as you run along spamming the insta aoe spell, and arriving at full before you even see an enemy. To build up to 100 combustion you would need to be at risk casting on live targets.

2. Make dots only benefit from the amount of combustion you had when you cast it. No more dotting a few ppl and running off out of sight spamming instant aoe spell to build combustion and start getting ridiculous crits soon after.


The 2 changes combined would make it so they can still pump out ridiculous amounts of damage, but only if they are willing to put themselves at (fairly minimal admittedly) risk by saying in range and casting constantly.

[retiredgamer]

I think switching the damage taken on BW's to a scaling wounds debuff could be very effective in both 1v1 pvp, group PvP and any other situation.

Right now combustion is dangerous without a healer... but with one, a BW can stay alive through pretty tight situations. There's L40 BWs on my server who tank at full combustion. They don't die and they end up killing EVERYONE, and do so from the front lines. If those same BW's had a drop in wounds instead of damage taken, they could still safely nuke from the back like they are supposed to, but they'd be too fragile to run full combustion at the front lines, even with a couple of healers watching.

edit:

to give an example, if a BW with 100 combustion would see his max health hit 1500 (or whatever number happens to work best), he could be taken out by any two players. This would force him to either retreat from the front lines or drop his combustion to gain survivability.

The problem I'm seeing is when 3+ good BW's enter an area, they can output so much damage that no one can get close enough to focus-fire back at them, even if we want to. We might be able to injure one but by the time we do, the other two have wiped out all attackers. This has led to repeated scenarios where a handful of BW's can stand around with a couple support healers and act as both the front and back line, killing anyone who approaches and at best, needing to retreat back only a couple of yards.

Switching to a wounds debuff keeps the BWs role as a high-damage rdps class intact and gives the BWs a way to maintain full control over their own survivability. It would make playing the class well a much more obsevational and tactical game and could lead to lots of exciting heart pounding decisions that the risk-reward system was intended to generate.

[Sahrokh]

I'd like to be nerfed the way of the dude above said (stacking wounds debuff), as I could still have my arsenal available in the tight times I really need it, while still making it impossible to keep that output for a long time.

I HATE the crit nerf instead. So please do the nerf as told above.

*prays the dark gods*

[Shortstack]

Explosions cause you to be stunned for 3s, not subject to diminishing returns. Problem solved.

[Shadowstorm]

Explosions cause you to be stunned for 3s, not subject to diminishing returns. Problem solved.
Genius. Pure and simple. Maybe even a knockback, as it would fit the idea that the backlash just knocked you on your....yea, it would work really well.

[retiredgamer]

a class with a built in stun mechanic would not be fun to play.

[Aiiane]

Genius. Pure and simple.

No, really not genius. Do you have any idea how often backlash triggers?

[Ironhelix73]

No, really not genius. Do you have any idea how often backlash triggers?

do you have any idea how badly BW dominate scenarios? something like this is needed, because playing a WE against a scenario with 4 or 5 Bright Wizards makes me not want to even play the game anymore. it's that bad.

[Aiiane]

do you have any idea how badly BW dominate scenarios? something like this is needed, because playing a WE against a scenario with 4 or 5 Bright Wizards makes me not want to even play the game anymore. it's that bad.

Thus they should be fixed, not broken. Or else next month it'll just be the exact opposite, except that the BWs will be complaining about the WEs, and for good reason.

Seriously, people need to learn that just because something is currently more powerful than it should be does not mean it should be utterly destroyed.

[Adepheon]

do you have any idea how badly BW dominate scenarios? something like this is needed, because playing a WE against a scenario with 4 or 5 Bright Wizards makes me not want to even play the game anymore. it's that bad.

Do you have any idea how bad it sucks to play against a scenario with 4 or 5 WEs? Lets toss in massive numbers of any class while we're at it. Perhaps 4 or 5 healers. I know I see 4 or 5 of any class in a single scenario all the time. :roll:

I love the attention we're getting. Raise us on a pedestal, we're demi-gods of damage.

[Squonk]

I really think you're on the right track with this idea.

There's a problem that needs solving.
It's not going to be solved by reducing the Heal vs Damage balance on a global basis...
This is about a broken mechanic (HoTs used to counteract all effects of Backlash).
As we can see, there are lots of other possible ways of getting this addressed.
I love the stacking wounds debuff idea... it doesn't change much on the surface, but it does put a sort of top limit on how far a BW/Sorc could go before it DID cost them their life.

Keep the thread on this topic going... and maybe we can hand Mythic a good alternate solution to the Backlash/HoT concern.

[Ironhelix73]

Do you have any idea how bad it sucks to play against a scenario with 4 or 5 WEs? Lets toss in massive numbers of any class while we're at it. Perhaps 4 or 5 healers. I know I see 4 or 5 of any class in a single scenario all the time. :roll:

I love the attention we're getting. Raise us on a pedestal, we're demi-gods of damage.

a WE can kill (or mildly irritate) ONE player at a time, regardless of how many other players he has supporting him. a handful of BW supported by a few healers can literally destroy everyone else in the scenario. the relative power of BWs turns the game into a formula where the only answer is to figure out how to stop the Bright Wizards. if this is what's intended, then the game is no fun. i want the BWs to be able to melt faces like they are supposed to, but being unstoppable killing machines is going a little too far.

[Shortstack]

*edited for content*

[Artek]

I like the idea of a knockback on explosion :P

Just make it one of those once in a blue moon flavour things :P


1 in every 1000 explosions the BW/Sorc gets a 60ft knockback :P

and 1 in every 1000 self kills the BW/Sorcs body is just a pair of shoes in a pile of dust :D


hehe I would piss myself laughing if i saw that.

[JRDobbs]

The OP's idea seems good to me. Even if you don't support that specific solution I think you have to agree that the Combustion/Darkmagic mechanic isn't working like it should. You're not supposed to just pump it up to 100 before the battle even starts and keep it there indefinitely. Mythic is nerfing Ironbreakers as we speak because they say that grudge is supposed to be an activly managed mechanic, not something you just push to 100 and then forget it. So why is it okay for Combustion to work that way?

[Code2501]

There are a lot of sticks being suggested, and some are good, but how about some carrots as well?

Part of the reason it is kept at 100 is because the benefit of the extra damage outweighs the negatives of the backlash... but what about providing a positive for why you would dump your DM/Comb back to zero? Currently aside from waiting for it to cool down the only way to 'dump dhar' is one ability that turns it into a tiny nuke. What about adding new abilities that rewards you for dumping your points?

One thing I could think of imediately would be to convert my DM into a mini HoT. the amount of times I would have loved to be able to HoT myself up a bit in SC after survivng a focused assault with no healers.

If this mechanic existed I would often dump all my DM to increase my chance of surviving. If I do survive, I'm at zero DM and greatly reduced DPS, but hey, its better than a long walk back to the fight yes?

Also, lore wise its somewhat fitting, at least for Sorc, dunno about BW. Sorc do have life taps and mini heals, so its just re-channeling that Dhar into a heal, at the same time as releasing it.

Just an idea, and by no means mutualy exclusive to any sticks or other mechanic fixes suggested here.
Personaly I think there needs to be something to reduce the ability to build DM fast before even engaging in combat, and the recent change to the amount of DM build on the pbaoe insta cast is a good change. But i also think we should be thinking about reasons why its good to zero out your built up DM/Comb not just ways to penalise you for keeping it at 100.

[Greggor]

The OP's idea seems good to me. Even if you don't support that specific solution I think you have to agree that the Combustion/Darkmagic mechanic isn't working like it should. You're not supposed to just pump it up to 100 before the battle even starts and keep it there indefinitely. Mythic is nerfing Ironbreakers as we speak because they say that grudge is supposed to be an activly managed mechanic, not something you just push to 100 and then forget it. So why is it okay for Combustion to work that way?

What ever debuff or lost for running at 100 Dm/Combustion players will still run at 100%.
Bw/Sorc dont really have a choice either have pathetic damage (0 Dm/Combustion) or insane damge (100 Dm/Combustion) with a very small window of having good damage.

Solution to have most of the spells casting in this good damage area Dm/Combustion around 60 to 70. This can be done by some of the better spells reduce the Dm/Combustion by 20 to 40 points.

Maybe something like this?

Core Spells increace Dm/Combustion
Speced spells Reduce Dm/Combustion
(But this could be played arround with, some core spells reduces Dm/Combustion and some speced spell increase Dm/Combustion)

Any spell that reduces Dm/Combustion has no backlash.

This would be similar to the ironbreakers grudge system

With some spell reducing Dm/Combustion if you wanted to use your best /Highest damaging spells it would reduce the Dm/Com and reduce the next few spells damage.

This would decease damage but increase survivalblity.

[Shortstack]

*edited for content*

[Drekthano]

Whenever you suffer an explosion/backlash, your combustion/dark magic is halved, rounded down to the nearest 5. Another alternate method.

[Moorhound]

a class with a built in stun mechanic would not be fun to play.

try playing a 1.05 healer

[Necrotoxin]

I like the idea of getting a healing debuff when your combustion is high, and a 3 second stun after backlash.

[BadgerCubed]

I really like the idea of a knock-back & knock-down for say 20ft range & 2 secs duration. The knock-back effect should also be in a random direction, i.e. it might knock them to safety or it might throw them off that inaccessible ledge into loving arms of the melee horde.

[sabo777]

*edited for content*

[sabo777]

*edited for content*

[sabo777]

Whenever you suffer an explosion/backlash, your combustion/dark magic is halved, rounded down to the nearest 5. Another alternate method.

this makes more sense

[Ilmoran]

3s stun on backlash is a terrible idea; I'm sorry, there's no other way to put it. A stun of any kind would be bad enough (Oh, you backlashed on Rain of Fire/Annihilate? Well, the entire spell is wasted), but 3s not subject to immunity is brutal.

Whenever you suffer an explosion/backlash, your combustion/dark magic is halved, rounded down to the nearest 5. Another alternate method.

This sounds good on paper, but the way DM/Combustion worked in Beta was that on an explosion, your combustion would be completely erased. I can remember a grand total of about 5 times over several hours of playing that I actually achieved 100% combustion. Your proposed change is less drastic, but it still makes it complete luck to get to 100% combustion, rather than a conscious choice.

One thing that all of these proposed solutions is leaving out is that we have only two ineffective choices for dumping combustion: Wait 10s for it to start draining, which allows us to micromanage what level it drops to (which I wouldn't mind if fights didn't end in 8s) or cast a nuke which completely erases all of our combustion, so we're stuck having to build back up to the "sweet spot" and then get 1 or 2 casts there before having to dump it again. If we had choices about how to spend out combustion, I'd be ok with some changes. Personally, of the ideas for changes, I think the most reasonable is just to add a healing debuff that scales sharply at high combustion (maybe 10% at level 4 combustion, and 50% at level 5). This way, even in the "sweet spot", you're still at greater risk, but once you overshoot it, it's time to vent a little steam.

Also, a very quick and easy option for spending combustion: Make Burnout use up 20-30 combustion.

[Greggor]

Whenever you suffer an explosion/backlash, your combustion/dark magic is halved, rounded down to the nearest 5. Another alternate method.

or maybe any time you suff a backlash/expolsion your Dm/com drops double the amount that you would have gained.
This could be anywhere from 10 to 80.

[MrGrimm999]

The problem is there is very little margin for error in this solution. If you make combustion give a heal debuff AND damage taken, then it is too powerful against you. It is not dangerous to cast at full combustion, it is a 100% death sentence. No class mecanic should guarentee your death no matter what, this is broken. On the other end of the spectrum, if you make it have a stacking heal debuff and do no damage, as long as tanks and the front lines do their job, you are a death machine. What was the other idea, a stacking wounds debuff? That is by far the worst idea. This makes your class 100% group dependent. I know this is a group game but changes that force your class to absoluately need a group and if there are any small scale skirmishes (which their often are) your mecanic becomes completely worthless. We already get focused so easily there is a very fine line where this mecanic can lie. It is probably better to keep it where it is and tweak our abilities, and tweak others abilities to be able to deal with it better rather than jurastically change the mecanic. I fear a big change could easily break the class completely, making the mecanic for the most part, useless.

Personally, I would make all spells give slightly less combustion, so overall it builds slower, and reward you for dumping it. Say something like burnout and dhar wind do a ton of unmitigatable damage. So often you would see a sorc or BW burn their cumbustion/dark magic to finish off a powerful foe. Then with combustion building slower, you would see an overall decrease in damage yet we could still pew pew when we filled it up, both sides win :)

[Code2501]

Way back when they first announced Sorc I thought the mechanic was going to give you a number of ways to expend built up DM, so you had the stick of backlash damage, and the carrot of a usefull spell that consumes DM, to encourage Sorc to 'actively manage' there DM. IMHO thats what is missing, the carrot.

Why not make our root consume DM? or our disarm? For BW, there KB could consume combustion...that way if we want use of those nice utility/CC spells we will need to reduce our DM.

There are lots of ways Mythic could encourage Sorc/BW to 'actively manage' there mechanic, rather than build it to 100 and game-over.

[Blackaxe]

The problem is there is very little margin for error in this solution. If you make combustion give a heal debuff AND damage taken, then it is too powerful against you. It is not dangerous to cast at full combustion, it is a 100% death sentence. No class mecanic should guarentee your death no matter what, this is broken.

I disagree in two respects. If the damage taken is fairly minor (roughly 15% of max health is what a brief investigation on the mechanics forums suggest current values for max explosion at lvl 40 are. i'd suggest that perhaps lowering that to 10% and introducing a level of heal debuff (perhaps 50% at max?) would be about right) means that you've got to be pretty persistent (dare i say... reckless?) to kill yourself without the help of an enemy. Note that this is actually a slight buff for solo BWs since they weren't going to get heals anyway.

On the other end of the spectrum, if you make it have a stacking heal debuff and do no damage, as long as tanks and the front lines do their job, you are a death machine.I'm assuming you're implying that this end of the spectrum is as unworkable as the other end. This I definately agree with. The entire point of the BW mechanic is "reckless use of high power magic can kill you".

What was the other idea, a stacking wounds debuff? That is by far the worst idea. This makes your class 100% group dependent. I know this is a group game but changes that force your class to absoluately need a group and if there are any small scale skirmishes (which their often are) your mecanic becomes completely worthless. We already get focused so easily there is a very fine line where this mecanic can lie. The biggest argument against a stacking -Wounds solution would probably be that it would promote all or nothing even further. If you're going to get one shotted at anything above 25 combustion then there's no point to being greater than 25 and less than 100. Given that Tanks and MDPS have little to no problem wiping out BWs anyway it's really only a benefit to RDPS anyway.

It is probably better to keep it where it is and tweak our abilities, and tweak others abilities to be able to deal with it better rather than jurastically change the mecanic. I fear a big change could easily break the class completely, making the mecanic for the most part, useless.The common complaint is that the mechanic as it stands is too easy to turn into "significant damage bonuses at no cost". The thing is that tweaks are only going to turn you into "underpowered if you don't have 100 combustion" (which is obviously not the right place to be) or "combustion doesn't really give you much of a bonus" (which i think is almost as bad as the first one since now your mechanic is mostly worthless by design).

Making a change to the mechanic to make it harder to completely mitigate the costs while making it more worthwhile to manage your combustion is the only real way I can see to get the most utility out of the mechanic as possible.

Personally, I would make all spells give slightly less combustion, so overall it builds slower, and reward you for dumping it. Say something like burnout and dhar wind do a ton of unmitigatable damage. So often you would see a sorc or BW burn their cumbustion/dark magic to finish off a powerful foe. Then with combustion building slower, you would see an overall decrease in damage yet we could still pew pew when we filled it up, both sides win :)At first blush this solution doesn't seem to really address the problem in my head. It changes the mechanic from a "manage this or die" mechanic into a "this is a really weird combo/finisher" mechanic (which to my mind is an even more fundamental change than others proposed). Having said that it would probably make the mechanic function the way most players would expect (max combustion until you want to dump it all into a big finisher) so that is at least one point in its favour.

[Code2501]

At first blush this solution doesn't seem to really address the problem in my head. It changes the mechanic from a "manage this or die" mechanic into a "this is a really weird combo/finisher" mechanic (which to my mind is an even more fundamental change than others proposed). Having said that it would probably make the mechanic function the way most players would expect (max combustion until you want to dump it all into a big finisher) so that is at least one point in its favour.

I think that just making a DM dump into a bigger nuke is the wrong approach. As you say, it would promote build up and blow it. However if there were multiple uses for DM expenditure tied to a range of purposes I think the pool of DM you had would be more varied over the course of a fight, rather than just sitting at 100.
For example;
An ability that buffs group wide DPS by 10% for 10 seconds, but consumes 80DM/Comb.
Make our roots consume 20DM.
etc

If this was the case most of the time Sorc/BW would be somewhere between 25 and 75 DM rather than always at 100.

[Brianmbailey]

What ever debuff or lost for running at 100 Dm/Combustion players will still run at 100%.
Bw/Sorc dont really have a choice either have pathetic damage (0 Dm/Combustion) or insane damge (100 Dm/Combustion) with a very small window of having good damage.

Solution to have most of the spells casting in this good damage area Dm/Combustion around 60 to 70. This can be done by some of the better spells reduce the Dm/Combustion by 20 to 40 points.

Maybe something like this?

Core Spells increace Dm/Combustion
Speced spells Reduce Dm/Combustion
(But this could be played arround with, some core spells reduces Dm/Combustion and some speced spell increase Dm/Combustion)

Any spell that reduces Dm/Combustion has no backlash.

This would be similar to the ironbreakers grudge system

With some spell reducing Dm/Combustion if you wanted to use your best /Highest damaging spells it would reduce the Dm/Com and reduce the next few spells damage.

This would decease damage but increase survivalblity.

This is the best idea I have heard yet. Some spells increase combustion, and others reduce it.

The spells that increase it will be weaker spells that don't do the damage of the spells that reduce it. That way you are constantly gaining and losing combustion/DM. This system would work extremely well.

Edit: Get rid of backlash with this system also. It would require a complete overhaul of the system and spells, but it would solve the problem for good. This would require good spell management to get max dps instead of just spamming pbaoe to 100 then nuking.

[Nightbringer1]

No, really not genius. Do you have any idea how often backlash triggers?

I imagine quite frequently when you are at 100% Dark Magic.

Of course that is the whole point, running at 100% Dark Magic 100% of the time should be a bad thing.

[Code2501]

Of course that is the whole point, running at 100% Dark Magic 100% of the time should be a bad thing.

Not really, theres no reason players should be punished for playing in a way the game designers didn't expect or want, thats just poor design. Games are an ENTERTAINMENT product, and as such good game design would make it either impossible to play in a way the designers don't want, or actively reward for playing in a fashion they do want.

[Malakai]

I say lower the crit chance and damage bonus and change the backlash accordingly. The result should be that a BW supported by a healer would be able to stay at 100 backlash, but not be able to do nearly as much damage as they do now.

If you increase the backlash damage, you run the chance of making backlash too undesirable or you turn bright wizards into suicide bombers who kill themselves in order to take out a primary target. I would just like to remove the quick kill element and the way to do that IMO is to simply reduce damage done (btw I think reducing crit damage bonus is better than decreasing crit rate).

[Shorts7ack]

Not really, theres no reason players should be punished for playing in a way the game designers didn't expect or want, thats just poor design. Games are an ENTERTAINMENT product, and as such good game design would make it either impossible to play in a way the designers don't want, or actively reward for playing in a fashion they do want.

El Oh El

I suppose this same logic applies to exploits? It's obviously not what they devs intended, but it's almost always beneficial to the exploiter.

[Code2501]

El Oh El

I suppose this same logic applies to exploits? It's obviously not what they devs intended, but it's almost always beneficial to the exploiter.

Yeah, they should just punish exploiters rather than actually fix the exploit to so it can no longer be exploited...:rolleyes:
Did you even read what I typed?

[Ilmoran]

I imagine quite frequently when you are at 100% Dark Magic.

Of course that is the whole point, running at 100% Dark Magic 100% of the time should be a bad thing.

Actually, that's your opinion. Back in Beta when they first introduced this new system of Combustion/Dark Magic, they said that what they expected was solo BW/Sorc to run at around 50-60% Combustion/DM, and 100% Combustion/DM to be something only really viable in groups.

[Ilmoran]

Personally, I would make all spells give slightly less combustion, so overall it builds slower, and reward you for dumping it. Say something like burnout and dhar wind do a ton of unmitigatable damage. So often you would see a sorc or BW burn their cumbustion/dark magic to finish off a powerful foe. Then with combustion building slower, you would see an overall decrease in damage yet we could still pew pew when we filled it up, both sides win :)

Disclaimer: I have not tested this in live (gf plays a healer so I never meltdown).

According to one of the C&C devs in Beta, Meltdown and Dhar wind are already undefendable.

[Blackaxe]

I imagine quite frequently when you are at 100% Dark Magic.

Of course that is the whole point, running at 100% Dark Magic 100% of the time should be a bad thing.

According to the mechanics forum it's 50% chance at 100% DM/Comb.

[Sahrokh]

Of course that is the whole point, running at 100% Dark Magic 100% of the time should be a bad thing


Then, the game mechanics should support the claim and the "whole point".

As of now, it's "quadratic": being slightly below 100% induces MASSIVE exponential-like loss of damage.
It's like playing those bar car racing video games: if you slam the gas to full AND never crash, you win. But if you release the gas just a tiny bit, you suddenly go at 50% and can't win.


If we had a "surge" (a Gaussian distribution) of damage at 60-70% DM and then the damage increase stopped "scaling" while backlash damage increased twice as much, everything would be solved. We would go to say 75% and then it'd be pointless to self kill (even an healer could not outheal the doubling damage) to achieve 80% DM which would now increase damage just by 2%.

But no, blanket nerfs without even considering the disparity between "mirrors" is so quicker and cheaper.

Never mind we were the weakest of the two and we rely on crits and cast time spells and benefit little from DoTs, while BWs see their DoTs nicely going up.

[Leanthral]

i like some of these ideas a lot actually.. i haven't read the entire thread because i'm lazy so if this has been said then excuse me... What i'd like to see maybe is some more casting time for spells. Lots of stuff is a fairly quick casting time, and lots of instant dots. From my point of view, it's a high damage caster, which should mean that if they can get their casts off, they will be devastating. That been said, leave the combustion system alone, and add longer/more casting times to specific spells, and/or as combustion rises, add extra casting time to spells. For example, maybe have a 1-2 second cast time for dots and a 3.5 second cast time for their single target big hits. (i can't remember the spell names, i'm a marauder :P) Anyways, it wouldn't be taking much away from their big damage, but it would balance out the risk factor a bit more, the longer u want to hand around, the more vulnerable you will be. I know this would make one v one a little harder, but really... u have given them every CC in the game, i think they'll manage to run away some how... Anyways, like some other people have mentioned, i agree that more combustion should be a bad thing and there should be a larger consequence for having high combustion/dark magic in the form of more damage to their self, debuffs, longer casting times, or a combination of one of those 3 "penalties".

so hopefully u get my point, that's my 2 cents. Great stuff coming out of this thread imo, hopefully it's being read by mythic...

Cheers

[Broloc]

do you have any idea how badly BW dominate scenarios? something like this is needed, because playing a WE against a scenario with 4 or 5 Bright Wizards makes me not want to even play the game anymore. it's that bad.

Then there's a population problem because I can say the same bs that playing in a scenario against 4 or 5 Witch elves isn't fun. Get a clue before accepting wild ideas.