Going from 4.8 seconds to 3.98 seconds would be worth the loss of 4 dps pretty much regardless of what else was done with the class.
I will trade 4 dps to cut my attack balance by 18% any day of the week.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
The major factor being left out of the equation is up-time. This is what Garryn was referring to regarding every combo vs. every other combo - if you're basing your up-time around waiting for the sowulu cooldown of 5 seconds, you're losing out on a massive amount of DPS from your axe hits (1s loss time per 4s reave DSL = 25% reduction over time), some amount of affliction potential (assuming tracking sensitivity is happening on a team-wide scale), and likely running into issues where you're only getting one DSL in anyway due to rebounding, etc.
Additionally, as Baasche pointed out (and you agreed with, didn't you?) - using sowulu every combo is a net loss to your damage momentum, because you're losing out on sip reduction, toadstool negating, hugalaz/eihwaz to prevent barriers. These tools are what makes RG as powerful as everyone keeps alluding to, because they dramatically increase the impact of the damage you're doing. Reave DSL + sowulu in a vacuum isn't going to kill anyone that has similar artifact footing, nor should it - much like other damage routes, you're relying on syncing heavy amounts of burst with healing reduction and preventing barriers to achieving that damage.
Your DPS is not lower-than-every-other knight because unlike a templar, you aren't consuming any resource to use your flare, and unlike deathknight, you can use strychnine in your damage combo for full benefit. The difference in strength is only 5.2%-ish regarding actual damage output, but in the above example, you were already reducing your damage four-fold from that just by virtue of trying to line up the sowulu.
To answer your numerical question, given a 4s DSL, you SHOULD be comparing sowulu proccing every other combo for 79u for 3.98s balance, for a total of 79 per ~8s, versus 49p per 3.98s.
79/7.96s = 9.9 DPS 49/3.98s = 12.3 DPS
(12.3 DPS/9.9 DPS)*100% = 124%, or roughly a 24% increase in DPS, given the resists/max health used in the example numbers you provided.
This above is why RG used infused weapons. It brought up the balance of the reave combo in line with the CD of sowulu so that it was used every 4.36s combo (Emily was underestimating our speed a good bit here it looks like), and also brought down the CD of flame to proc every combo. Your dps isn't correct if you've used the class as it wasn't ever a case of two 3.98s reave combos and a sowulu every other one. It was a single 4.36 reave combo and each one had sowulu, and if the health conditions were met, each one had flame too.
79/4.36 = 18.1dps (even 79/5 would be 15.8)
49/3.98 = 12.3dps
It's a net loss. (not even taking into account flame, because well.. as much as I'd like to assume I can keep someone at or under 60%, it's not necessarily the case. Not any more at least.) Is it a large loss? Not so much no but when you compare RG reave to Templar or DK Lich reave we're already lower by as much as 12 a slash. That was the difference between 16 and 17 strength done to myself. Then add in a shield would resist an additional 8 per slash from a 162 raw reave and RG sees a 40 damage difference before the flare.
Can we please please please please please please please please please please please please do something about this?
18:02:43.659 410[64] 480[100] e- db 4 0 47.45 0 0 0 20 20 [++--+-] 18:02:43.669 You have recovered balance. 18:02:43.671 You quickdraw an elegant mahogany quarterstaff. 18:02:43.674 (Luciia) stabbed. (strychnine) 18:02:43.675 Balance Taken: 3.01s 18:02:43.677 You swing your quarterstaff and an animated apple root spins around and batters Luciia, shredding 18:02:43.677 her skin mercilessly. 18:02:43.688 The last vestiges of strength having ebbed from Luciia's body, she sinks to the floor with a sigh. 18:02:43.688 Suddenly, your surroundings are enveloped in a blinding white light, forcing you to cower with your 18:02:43.688 hands over your eyes. When you tentatively open them once more, you are astonished to find Luciia 18:02:43.688 alive once more. 18:02:43.689 Equilibrium Taken: 1.47s 18:02:43.690 Naturebind birch shred Luciia added to your EQUILIBRIUM queue. 18:02:43.692 410[64] 480[100] -- db 4 0 47.45 0 0 0 30 20 [++--+-]
I just feel like I should stop playing.
2015/09/22 07:59:09 - Luciia has been slain by Iniar.
This above is why RG used infused weapons. It brought up the balance of the reave combo in line with the CD of sowulu so that it was used every 4.36s combo (Emily was underestimating our speed a good bit here it looks like), and also brought down the CD of flame to proc every combo. Your dps isn't correct if you've used the class as it wasn't ever a case of two 3.98s reave combos and a sowulu every other one. It was a single 4.36 reave combo and each one had sowulu, and if the health conditions were met, each one had flame too.
79/4.36 = 18.1dps (even 79/5 would be 15.8)
49/3.98 = 12.3dps
It's a net loss. (not even taking into account flame, because well.. as much as I'd like to assume I can keep someone at or under 60%, it's not necessarily the case. Not any more at least.) Is it a large loss? Not so much no but when you compare RG reave to Templar or DK Lich reave we're already lower by as much as 12 a slash. That was the difference between 16 and 17 strength done to myself. Then add in a shield would resist an additional 8 per slash from a 162 raw reave and RG sees a 40 damage difference before the flare.
That's 10dps less than the other knights.
I mean, you have everyone including Garryn telling you that this wasn't the intended use of sowulu, and everyone trying to explain the value of your other flares. If you're going to refuse to maximize your DPS by excluding them, then that's really just on you - nothing anyone else says is going to change that.
When classleads are approved, I assume that the guys who approve them have certain usage combinations in mind - although of course sometimes innovative people find new and exciting ways to use things that admin never intended (which is sometimes "fine" and sometimes "haha, that was great, but yeah, we're totally nerfing that now"). But yeah, it seems like there pretty much has to be a comprehensive concept of the way (or ways) the class can "work" that classleads understand and are working from, whether they are tweaking or totally retooling a class. And it actually has to be pretty well defined, too, or it just won't work. Imperian already has some of the better "this is your class and the PvP routes" files I've seen, but they could probably afford to be updated and beefed up with THAT kind of information. Information that provides fairly deep insight into what the class is currently about and its core mechanisms - the class as classlead types view it as of the latest classleads and how they envisioned the core abilities being used. Or, better yet, leave the current class file relatively short (but make sure it's up to date) and refer people to a more detailed file on mechanics.
It's not even a complicated concept, though, and just takes some time testing or actually participating in fights. It's like Khizan pointed out - if your only combat experience is group fights where you have a crushingly huge advantage, you're learning nothing, and you won't succeed outside of those parameters as a result. I have yet to encounter Emily or Alonzo outside of those settings, and accordingly, it's understandable that they don't really understand the profession.
Here's an easy way of explaining it - let's say I sip for 25% maxhp (summoner + arties, this is a decent estimate). If I have pithakhan flared at me in conjunction with a reave combo, I'm going to be forced to sip for half value (so 25/2 = 12.5%), which is equivalent to 12.5% maxhp damage over time. Following this round of reaves, I get reaved again, this time with sowulu. My next sip is ALSO reduced by the same margin, for a grand total of 25% maxhp effective damage. And more importantly, this is damage taken at a time when it's most important. Sipping for half following a heavy damage combo sets you up for all of those nasty flame procs, and this can be furthered by a nauthiz flare to also absorb the toadstool consumption for another 10% maxhp effective damage.
This is why everyone is shaking their heads in frustration, because the tool being complained about isn't even close to the most effective tool in the kit, and yet it seems to be what everyone is focusing on. It's being completely left out of these arbitrary DPS estimates and is doing a very poor job of representing what the damage pressure of the class actually is. And that's without even getting started on what's possible when you move past reave spam.
The change to sowulu makes complete sense if you consider sowulu to be the easy, spammable option that low-skill players can lean on, and that's what it is now. Reducing the cooldown meant that it needed a damage type associated with it, since now it's that much more potent in a team situation. In smaller skirmishes, if you're flaring sowulu every round, you're doing it absolutely wrong.
That's all good and fine and honestly you can say what ever you want while ignoring both the entire point of my initial post, and the classlead it was addressing.
Did RG damage go down? Yes.
Was there a classlead that asked for that? No.
It is then feasible to understand why we might be a little put out at a classlead round where most everyone is getting access to new toys (or at least being promised them) and one of our attempts to gain something, is in fact a nerf? Apparently not.
Disagree all you want, I honestly can't be bothered discussing things with closed minded people.
[172] Knife (Runeguard Chivalry) duration increased to 4 seconds.
Hey, there's your new toy, knife now persists into the next combo, increasing your effective damage. If only there were a way to capitalize on this burst window with something that could reduce healing at the same time...
[263] Sowulu flare (Runelore) damage changed to psychic, and the cooldown reduced to 2 seconds [165] Soulquench (Brutality) now does cold damage, the formula is slightly changed, and the health threshold for it has been lowered to 60%
I'm noticing a trend when it comes to knights doing unblockable damage, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe it has something to do with adjustments in the first round following a class revamp release. Or maybe it's a conspiracy!
I'm more than happy to discuss things with people who may be a bit ignorant on the subject, because I enjoy teaching people how to fight better - assuming they're willing to listen. If you wanted to keep the discussion on the topic of woe-is-runeguard, it may have been best to keep it within the echo chamber, rather than pulling it into the public eye for critical discussion.
Noone cares if you're a magicker. I'd tell someone on my own side (and frequently do) that they're patently wrong when attempting to argue numbers in a vacuum when disregarding several other factors (namely a non trivial dps upgrade in the form of the knife change that happened alongside sowulu, the fact that not being constrained to a longer cooldown means you can combine sowulu on every dsl with weapons that aren't a battleaxe, etc).
I mean, you can keep thinking people are disagreeing based on your circle afiliation if you want. But noone posting in this thread actually could care less about that stuff.
I suppose my point was people will read a comment and not take it on it's merit at all.
I do 15 less damage a hit to a Templar than he does to me, with the exact same investment. That's every reave, not every combo. My sowulu being higher than his/her flare made up for that. Pithakhan is amazing, and I use it every time it's off CD absolutely, I'm not discounting it at all, but for that Templar has both a healing and a damaging rite. Condemnation does 59 to me when ever it ticks, you'll likely have to fill in the tick time here because I honestly don't know it. It's not something I'd count out as trivial though, by any means. Am I saying pithakhan is the same as these? No, I suppose I ought to point that out before it gets pounced on.
Knife on the other hand doesn't add enough damage to even bring my level 3 battleaxe up to par with a Templars from the get go, leading it to appear as a pretty trivial change. On a knife flare I'll gain 6-9 additional damage per reave on a decently armoured opponent, the less armour, the less damage obviously. The 9 was on myself, with 78% armour resists when I'm holding my shield for the purposes of testing.
Knife was always possible, even before the cooldown change by foregoing the heavy smithing trait and using tigerstance. That's probably the best option now, though the nature of sowulu didn't really lend itself to it before now.
Gaining a shield would be wonderful, classlead 264 was rejected by way of waiting to see how 263 played out. Right now 263 is pushing people out of Runeguard.
Does the templar you were testing on have the exact same maxhp as you? Numbers are only useful as percentages because of the huge difference between the static and scaling component of attacks.
Based solely on stats, your reave should be doing 5.2% less damage, because there is only a one point strength difference between you. Resists and armour will play a big role, and so a resists check breakdown would be most useful, but algiz is 10% resistance to all damage, while earthshield is 10% plus 5% from toughness. Combined, you might see a roughly 10% difference in damage, solely on the physical component. Shield does play a significant role here, but that points more towards the sheer tankiness of templar rather than any squishiness runeguard sees.
The templar healing rite is irrelevant because you're discounting berkana/uruz at the same time, so we can solely compare it to condemnation, which is roughly a 10% hit on a 10s (I believe?) cooldown, with a 50% chance to hit either health or mana. This is likely comparable to nauthiz flare, except that nauthiz has the benefit of blocking health and mana regeneration concurrently for an overall greater effect per time invested. So pithahkan is still a huge contributer on top of these components.
Other factors to consider: - Flame is a damage burst on a 5s cooldown, gated by 60% max health. - Knife is a 50% armor penalty on a 10s cooldown, gated by 50% max health. - Bolt is addiction on an 8s cooldown, gated by 65% max health.
Why is addiction important here? 1) You're likely delivering it alongside other high priority afflictions (namely, sensitivity), which means that if someone is off focus cooldown or has it blocked (hint: loshre), they run a significant chance of sipping before it's healed, resulting in completely negating a sip's effect in mitigating health damage. This is in addition to pithahkan!
So you have a) the ability to diminish healing, making reaves significantly stronger at driving down health over the course of several rounds, and b) you have three enhancement cooldowns that all impact damage delivery, gated by damage delivery... which you have a reliable means of reaching, as described previously.
I said it before, and it's worth saying again: if you're only looking at raw DPS metrics and focusing in on sowulu's delivery, you're missing the point of the class entirely. Templar has somewhat higher ungated damage because its progression is much shakier - the lack of reliable healing denial and sip reduction means it requires more effort to meet the threshold conditions - emblazing, for instance, requires steady pressure that can't be invoked by using a flare.
Note: I'm going purely off of memory for virtually everything templar, which is a half decade outdated at this point, so any or all of the specific numbers might be wrong. The intent is the same though!
I hate that too Iniar Also, I see no calming deer.
(SysZephy): Luciia - Myried proc
A wave of sickness emanates briefly from Luciia.
Luciia appears disoriented as the power of the We note strikes her.
A chorus of music rises up from the corpse of Luciia and you feel a sudden surge of vitality.
The last vestiges of strength having ebbed from Luciia's body, she sinks to the floor with a sigh.
Suddenly, your surroundings are enveloped in a blinding white light, forcing you to cower with your hands over your eyes. When you tentatively open them once more, you are astonished to find Luciia alive once more.
Also, anyone want to tell me why Frozen in a Nuarinyu affliction? Or at least, why we can't choose our second affliction for Nuarinyu when it's Ta empowered? While Chi/Ta empowered Nuarinyu's (in conjuction with sketches and Innyo) are fairly potent, the current resonance limit is already extremely limiting and when combined with the randomness of the second Nuarinyu affliction possibly hitting Frozen (and getting rid of just the caloric defence, and thus not counting towards a Voice affliction) detracts Bard's offense by quite a bit, solely due to RNG. I'd argue that being forced to use 1 ~ 3 resonance for essentially the same effect as an unempowered Nuarinyu by sheer RNG when you're attempting an offence is too costly with the resonance limit as is.
It also happens frequently enough in combat to be noticeable. And it's a serious enough dip in damage that it can easily change the outcome of a fight. I'd say it's a dip of anywhere from 50 ~ 200 damage, and the fact that it's supposed to be burst means that the damage dip is more significant.
Magick dudes, you guys really do need a great leader or two, who will teach you how to really use things. Someone who can show you how and why "no, you're wrong" or "stop using that", and who is capable of leading a group in chaos. I don't know why Eldreth left. Maybe he just wanted to play a new class. Maybe you didn't listen to him and treat him well. I don't actually know. But you desperately need someone like that, who has decided you are worth teaching something and that it's worth sticking around to build a team. Otherwise people from other circles are often helpful... to a point. But you want at least a person or two of that caliber who is invested in your (filthy) magicker team.
Very, very few people have the time, intelligence and dedication to get passably decent, much less "pretty good" without some pretty serious coaching. But hey, if someone is teaching the guys they're going to fight with, and you seem to be taking it seriously, and willing to accept losing a lot, it might be worth their while, even if they're convinced you're pretty dense. And then, you do actually have to swallow your pride and listen, and admit you're not as good as you think you are if that's a problem. And beat your head against the wall to "make thing werk, dammit".
If anyone in magick wants to come fight, and then talk about those fight logs afterwards with a critical eye, I'm more than happy to give whatever insight I can.
The key phrase is come fight. There's been a whole lot of talk and virtually no fighting, pre- and post-classleads. Make a ruckus! Nobody will be angry (maybe)!
I hate that too Iniar Also, I see no calming deer.
(SysZephy): Luciia - Myried proc
A wave of sickness emanates briefly from Luciia.
Luciia appears disoriented as the power of the We note strikes her.
A chorus of music rises up from the corpse of Luciia and you feel a sudden surge of vitality.
The last vestiges of strength having ebbed from Luciia's body, she sinks to the floor with a sigh.
Suddenly, your surroundings are enveloped in a blinding white light, forcing you to cower with your hands over your eyes. When you tentatively open them once more, you are astonished to find Luciia alive once more.
Also, anyone want to tell me why Frozen in a Nuarinyu affliction? Or at least, why we can't choose our second affliction for Nuarinyu when it's Ta empowered? While Chi/Ta empowered Nuarinyu's (in conjuction with sketches and Innyo) are fairly potent, the current resonance limit is already extremely limiting and when combined with the randomness of the second Nuarinyu affliction possibly hitting Frozen (and getting rid of just the caloric defence, and thus not counting towards a Voice affliction) detracts Bard's offense by quite a bit, solely due to RNG. I'd argue that being forced to use 1 ~ 3 resonance for essentially the same effect as an unempowered Nuarinyu by sheer RNG when you're attempting an offence is too costly with the resonance limit as is.
It also happens frequently enough in combat to be noticeable. And it's a serious enough dip in damage that it can easily change the outcome of a fight. I'd say it's a dip of anywhere from 50 ~ 200 damage, and the fact that it's supposed to be burst means that the damage dip is more significant.
Can we get a location in the e-mail shardfall notifications? Our guys are pretty good about logging the shardfall and its location if they're around (except Khizan, he is the worst) but it would be great to get that piece of information in the e-mail.
He's going to have a heart attack if he keeps going on like he was last night. Poor boy is surely, right at this moment, having a nightmare about dropping half a million gold on inks, which he smears under his eyes in place of tears.
Edit: ... that's how the Bard do.
You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
Yes, the problem would be abuse to gain whatever reward the incentive is. But this is just a really (really) rough idea.
Say you turn SPARON on, and at least two other people have it on (small method of preventing abuse), it would be cool if at that point, we had a server side matchmaking system (meh, maybe rng). The two chosen fighters get a message no matter where they are standing saying "bla bla accept opponent" (important to make it actually say opponent and not say the opponents name) and bamn, those players enter the arena.
At that point, world message (configurable on or off) goes out announcing the fight and the fighters, because let's face it, sometimes it's cool to go to outside the coliseum and watch a fight via diagnose and es coliseum.
At the end of the fight, the winner receives a coliseum prize bag. Inside the bag, the incentive. Has to be small enough to not break the game (or people's idea of fairplay) but should have a SMALL CHANCE of something relatively big. And by big I mean like a whopping 5 credits (huge I know). The more normal prize in the bag being maybe 250 gold, or some inks, or some herbs. You get the idea, whatever.
But yeah, super rough idea - so don't flame it. But it would be cool, and it would add an element to the game that actually pushes interaction. Something I think we would benefit from.
Comments
Going from 4.8 seconds to 3.98 seconds would be worth the loss of 4 dps pretty much regardless of what else was done with the class.
I will trade 4 dps to cut my attack balance by 18% any day of the week.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Additionally, as Baasche pointed out (and you agreed with, didn't you?) - using sowulu every combo is a net loss to your damage momentum, because you're losing out on sip reduction, toadstool negating, hugalaz/eihwaz to prevent barriers. These tools are what makes RG as powerful as everyone keeps alluding to, because they dramatically increase the impact of the damage you're doing. Reave DSL + sowulu in a vacuum isn't going to kill anyone that has similar artifact footing, nor should it - much like other damage routes, you're relying on syncing heavy amounts of burst with healing reduction and preventing barriers to achieving that damage.
Your DPS is not lower-than-every-other knight because unlike a templar, you aren't consuming any resource to use your flare, and unlike deathknight, you can use strychnine in your damage combo for full benefit. The difference in strength is only 5.2%-ish regarding actual damage output, but in the above example, you were already reducing your damage four-fold from that just by virtue of trying to line up the sowulu.
To answer your numerical question, given a 4s DSL, you SHOULD be comparing sowulu proccing every other combo for 79u for 3.98s balance, for a total of 79 per ~8s, versus 49p per 3.98s.
79/7.96s = 9.9 DPS
49/3.98s = 12.3 DPS
(12.3 DPS/9.9 DPS)*100% = 124%, or roughly a 24% increase in DPS, given the resists/max health used in the example numbers you provided.
18:02:43.669 You have recovered balance.
18:02:43.671 You quickdraw an elegant mahogany quarterstaff.
18:02:43.674 (Luciia) stabbed. (strychnine)
18:02:43.675 Balance Taken: 3.01s
18:02:43.677 You swing your quarterstaff and an animated apple root spins around and batters Luciia, shredding
18:02:43.677 her skin mercilessly.
18:02:43.688 The last vestiges of strength having ebbed from Luciia's body, she sinks to the floor with a sigh.
18:02:43.688 Suddenly, your surroundings are enveloped in a blinding white light, forcing you to cower with your
18:02:43.688 hands over your eyes. When you tentatively open them once more, you are astonished to find Luciia
18:02:43.688 alive once more.
18:02:43.689 Equilibrium Taken: 1.47s
18:02:43.690 Naturebind birch shred Luciia added to your EQUILIBRIUM queue.
18:02:43.692 410[64] 480[100] -- db 4 0 47.45 0 0 0 30 20 [++--+-]
Here's an easy way of explaining it - let's say I sip for 25% maxhp (summoner + arties, this is a decent estimate). If I have pithakhan flared at me in conjunction with a reave combo, I'm going to be forced to sip for half value (so 25/2 = 12.5%), which is equivalent to 12.5% maxhp damage over time. Following this round of reaves, I get reaved again, this time with sowulu. My next sip is ALSO reduced by the same margin, for a grand total of 25% maxhp effective damage. And more importantly, this is damage taken at a time when it's most important. Sipping for half following a heavy damage combo sets you up for all of those nasty flame procs, and this can be furthered by a nauthiz flare to also absorb the toadstool consumption for another 10% maxhp effective damage.
This is why everyone is shaking their heads in frustration, because the tool being complained about isn't even close to the most effective tool in the kit, and yet it seems to be what everyone is focusing on. It's being completely left out of these arbitrary DPS estimates and is doing a very poor job of representing what the damage pressure of the class actually is. And that's without even getting started on what's possible when you move past reave spam.
The change to sowulu makes complete sense if you consider sowulu to be the easy, spammable option that low-skill players can lean on, and that's what it is now. Reducing the cooldown meant that it needed a damage type associated with it, since now it's that much more potent in a team situation. In smaller skirmishes, if you're flaring sowulu every round, you're doing it absolutely wrong.
[172] Knife (Runeguard Chivalry) duration increased to 4 seconds.
Hey, there's your new toy, knife now persists into the next combo, increasing your effective damage. If only there were a way to capitalize on this burst window with something that could reduce healing at the same time...
[263] Sowulu flare (Runelore) damage changed to psychic, and the cooldown reduced to 2 seconds
[165] Soulquench (Brutality) now does cold damage, the formula is slightly changed, and the health threshold for it has been lowered to 60%
I'm noticing a trend when it comes to knights doing unblockable damage, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe it has something to do with adjustments in the first round following a class revamp release. Or maybe it's a conspiracy!
I'm more than happy to discuss things with people who may be a bit ignorant on the subject, because I enjoy teaching people how to fight better - assuming they're willing to listen. If you wanted to keep the discussion on the topic of woe-is-runeguard, it may have been best to keep it within the echo chamber, rather than pulling it into the public eye for critical discussion.
Noone cares if you're a magicker. I'd tell someone on my own side (and frequently do) that they're patently wrong when attempting to argue numbers in a vacuum when disregarding several other factors (namely a non trivial dps upgrade in the form of the knife change that happened alongside sowulu, the fact that not being constrained to a longer cooldown means you can combine sowulu on every dsl with weapons that aren't a battleaxe, etc).
I mean, you can keep thinking people are disagreeing based on your circle afiliation if you want. But noone posting in this thread actually could care less about that stuff.
Does the templar you were testing on have the exact same maxhp as you? Numbers are only useful as percentages because of the huge difference between the static and scaling component of attacks.
Based solely on stats, your reave should be doing 5.2% less damage, because there is only a one point strength difference between you. Resists and armour will play a big role, and so a resists check breakdown would be most useful, but algiz is 10% resistance to all damage, while earthshield is 10% plus 5% from toughness. Combined, you might see a roughly 10% difference in damage, solely on the physical component. Shield does play a significant role here, but that points more towards the sheer tankiness of templar rather than any squishiness runeguard sees.
The templar healing rite is irrelevant because you're discounting berkana/uruz at the same time, so we can solely compare it to condemnation, which is roughly a 10% hit on a 10s (I believe?) cooldown, with a 50% chance to hit either health or mana. This is likely comparable to nauthiz flare, except that nauthiz has the benefit of blocking health and mana regeneration concurrently for an overall greater effect per time invested. So pithahkan is still a huge contributer on top of these components.
Other factors to consider:
- Flame is a damage burst on a 5s cooldown, gated by 60% max health.
- Knife is a 50% armor penalty on a 10s cooldown, gated by 50% max health.
- Bolt is addiction on an 8s cooldown, gated by 65% max health.
Why is addiction important here? 1) You're likely delivering it alongside other high priority afflictions (namely, sensitivity), which means that if someone is off focus cooldown or has it blocked (hint: loshre), they run a significant chance of sipping before it's healed, resulting in completely negating a sip's effect in mitigating health damage. This is in addition to pithahkan!
So you have a) the ability to diminish healing, making reaves significantly stronger at driving down health over the course of several rounds, and b) you have three enhancement cooldowns that all impact damage delivery, gated by damage delivery... which you have a reliable means of reaching, as described previously.
I said it before, and it's worth saying again: if you're only looking at raw DPS metrics and focusing in on sowulu's delivery, you're missing the point of the class entirely. Templar has somewhat higher ungated damage because its progression is much shakier - the lack of reliable healing denial and sip reduction means it requires more effort to meet the threshold conditions - emblazing, for instance, requires steady pressure that can't be invoked by using a flare.
Note: I'm going purely off of memory for virtually everything templar, which is a half decade outdated at this point, so any or all of the specific numbers might be wrong. The intent is the same though!
The key phrase is come fight. There's been a whole lot of talk and virtually no fighting, pre- and post-classleads. Make a ruckus! Nobody will be angry (maybe)!
It's not going to happen.
Edit: ... that's how the Bard do.
Yes, the problem would be abuse to gain whatever reward the incentive is. But this is just a really (really) rough idea.
Say you turn SPARON on, and at least two other people have it on (small method of preventing abuse), it would be cool if at that point, we had a server side matchmaking system (meh, maybe rng). The two chosen fighters get a message no matter where they are standing saying "bla bla accept opponent" (important to make it actually say opponent and not say the opponents name) and bamn, those players enter the arena.
At that point, world message (configurable on or off) goes out announcing the fight and the fighters, because let's face it, sometimes it's cool to go to outside the coliseum and watch a fight via diagnose and es coliseum.
At the end of the fight, the winner receives a coliseum prize bag. Inside the bag, the incentive. Has to be small enough to not break the game (or people's idea of fairplay) but should have a SMALL CHANCE of something relatively big. And by big I mean like a whopping 5 credits (huge I know). The more normal prize in the bag being maybe 250 gold, or some inks, or some herbs. You get the idea, whatever.
But yeah, super rough idea - so don't flame it. But it would be cool, and it would add an element to the game that actually pushes interaction. Something I think we would benefit from.
Thoughts?