AOE'S People

[Astri]

<DIV>     If you guys will simply learn how to use your AOE's effectively in a group, and run combatstats you'll realize that we are kick [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot] in DPS. It's just that too many people are stuck in EQ1 and want to do single powerful nukes. Trust me I was there until I hit about level 32, and I realized I must be doing something wrong if a paladin was outdamaging me.</DIV>

[Daeloq]

<DIV>My wizard is still a baby sorcerer (lvl 11), so I haven't experienced this yet.  But do AoE's create aggro problems, or does the entire group aggro on the MT?  Does MT have to use AoE taunts to make sure they keep it?  Just want to know what I'll be getting into soon enough...</DIV>

[Fendaria]

I'll believe it when I see the numbers.Please post the AE you are using, the average per mob hit the spell is doing, the casting time, and the mana it takes to cast the spell.Now post the average damage your nukes are doing, casting times, and mana usage for those nukes.It takes me about 6 mobs to make AEs worthwhile over single target nukes. I still cast them at about 4 out of denial mostly (and I'm a sucker for seeing all the mob hits <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />First, the AE nukes take longer to cast. I generally mark a spells 'worth' by damage over casting time. A spell that does 2k damage but take 20sec to cast is really only 100dps. And don't forget that extra 0.5 a second time as well. This is your 'time investment' in casting that spell. Think of it this way, while you are still casting that longer duration AE, you could have already finished another single target nuke and started casting another nuke. Then you have to consider the damage per mana side as well. Second, the damage is low on the AEs vrs your single target nukes. On average, my AEs hit for 1/4 the damage per mob or less compared to my single target nukes. Factor this in with the longer casting time and increased mana cost and well, they just come up short for me.I wish the spells would be mana or dps efficient to cast on 3+ mobs over my AE nukes. I could live with them being mana/dps efficient on 4+ mobs. But this isn't the case.But I want to believe you. I really do. I'd be a happier Wizard. Please show me how I'm wrong with some numbers.Fendaria<p>Message Edited by Fendaria on <span class=date_text>03-11-2005</span> <span class=time_text>07:03 PM</span>

[AngelR]

<DIV>The other problem, from my perspective of having played both a guardian and a wizard, is that if you are AEing then you are spreading that damage out over all the mobs instead of killing them off one by one, all the time reducing the sources of damage to the tank.  Having all the mobs drop dead at the same time is NOT an efficient way to do things.  It means that the encounter is dishing out damage at full capacity for the entire fight, something your healers would certainly not appreciate. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I've always maintained that the first priority in a multi-mob encounter is to reduce the sources of damage as quickly as possible.  When I was tank and main assist,  I always targetted the down-arrow weaklings first.  Kill them off fast, it's one less mob hitting you, and one less mob you have to worry about aggroing someone else.  Perhaps others would disagree, but it always worked for me. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I don't have the luxury of selecting my own targets in a group as a wizard, so I make it my job to burn down that single mob that the MT has as quick as possible.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

[Stavenh]

<DIV>It's not so much about killing all the mobs at once, it's about softening them up. AEs are good on groups of 4 and up (In nek castle you get those 5 and up groups). AE debuff, couple of other AEs, then nuke nuke. Your not having to kill mobs fresh each time, they can already be down 1-3 bubbles. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>My friends love my AEs. The tank rocks with holding aggro, and I just nuke away.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>If your doing HOs and get the AS one, cast an AE to complete it, extra damage on all the mobs.</DIV>

[ailees]

already lot of posts about it, best :http://www.fabulaemarrii.com/guides/aoevsdd.htmgood study, with facts and chiffers, not only feelings.

[killzo]

<DIV>Wizard AoE's are hardly worth using.  To put this in perspective as a level 50 I was recently finishing off gnoll mastery so I was killing off gnolls in Antonica.  These are level 12-18ish mobs.  I would cast Icy Wind (adept 1 - level 48 spell), followed by scorching pulse (adept 1 - level 36) and then Fiery Pulse (adept 1 - level 49).  Using these spells it takes me approximately 20 seconds to kill off a group of sub 20 mobs.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Do you really think any of these (other than Icy Wind because it's a debuff) are worth using on 40+ mobs?  They are not.  Your better off using DD spells on these things.  Again the only exception is Icy Wind because it also has a nice elemental debuff.</DIV>

[Padi]

<DIV>I don't know what it's like at 50, but grouping with mid 40 wizards and parsing, I notice any groups of 3 or 4+ and their DPS always goes up by nearly 50% over the single target fights.  I can't imagine there being another reason other than AoE's for that big of an improvement consistantly.  This is with every wizard and warlock I've ever grouped with too.  Not just wizards.</DIV>

[Tyrant Invict]

<DIV>I'll cast Freezing Wind on 4 or more mobs (sometimes 3 if I know they have a lot of hitpoints) partially for the debuff, and partially because it's just a lot of extra damage that keeps ticking off while I switch to single target DD's.  It's easier than debuffing each mob individually, and it lasts for a nice period of time too.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>In instances with several mobs that have very few hitpoints (the larger groups of goblins down in Runnyeye for example), I'll usually cast Scorching Pulse as well.  Instead of wasting a long cast time over nuking a weak mob that'll be dead before I'm done casting anyways I'll just keep the Wind refreshed and drop a Scorching Pulse everytime its up, with a quick DD here and there.  Once we are down below 3 mobs left standing, I'll switch back to exclusively using DD's, if I can even get one off in the time it takes the group to kill the remaining, weakened mobs.  By the time the tank switches to that last mob, it's usually a one swing affair.</DIV>

[FayeStoutbel]

<DIV><FONT size=2>I do love being able to AoE!  My friend is a zerker, so he can hold the agg pretty well allowing me to let of a couple AoEs.  I do agree that the casting time VS damage ratio does make them not so appealing.  The baddies do fall a lot faster when I unleash firey Gnomey death on them with the big ole DD nukes.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=2>Ping</FONT></DIV>

[Asterra]

Pure nonsense. I have Master I on: Icy Wind, Inferno and Fiery Pulse (the latter two of which are 100% identical and share the same recast timer), and Adept III on Scorching Pulse. Plus Adept I on Ring of Cold. At level 50, those are the five AEs that might conceivably be used in battle. A typical group encounter has three to five mobs in it. Most often three, but let's stipulate four on average. Exceptions are far too rare to count, or else one might as well count dual-mob single-up encounters, which are far, far more common.So, I cast Icy Wind Master I, which nets me 1000 damage per mob that survives for 40 seconds. 40 seconds, ladies and gentlemen. Watch your clock and count those off now and tell me how frequently all or even most mobs in a group encounter last that long. Nonetheless, this is certainly the best AE Wizards get. For the cost of an Ice Comet, you can do almost an Ice Comet worth of damage, as long as there are plenty of mobs in the encounter.Well, that brings us to the other wonders in the Wizard repertoire. Scorching Pulse does about 140 damage per mob. The cost is 191, which is basically the same as Ball of Flames, which does 790 damage on average and casts more quickly, with a far, far quicker recast. In short, people, you need no fewer than five mobs in the group for Scorching Pulse to MATCH the DPS and efficiency of Ball of Flames. So if there aren't at least five mobs in the encounter, this spell is a patentable waste. Including in our hypothetically average encounter of four.Ring of Cold is strictly a soloing / emergency crowd control spell. Its long cast time and effectively nonexistent damage make this clear. This is the lone example of a specific counterpart to a spell Warlocks get which does much the same thing.That leaves Inferno / Fiery Pulse, which as I said are 100% identical. At Master I, these spells do 300 damage on average, at a cost of 240. Sounds pretty good, eh? You'd only need four mobs in an encounter for this to be as good as Ball of Flames. But wait. The cast time is an inexplicable five seconds. And the recast time is fifteen. These facts preclude any possible efficient recast of these spells, because by the time one has waited out those absurd delays, there are too few mobs in the encounter for the spells to be efficient any longer, and five precious seconds is enough time to cast Ball of Flames plus Ice Spike for over 1000 direct damage, further reducing the value of these AEs.In short, direct damage seems to at least tie, if not outright beat AEs in almost all cases. That's the point of this post. The really scary business is what happens when we begin to compare Wizard AEs to Warlock AEs. Then the jaws drop in disbelief.

[Magu]

pre LF nurf patch. people could argue all day and night about AEs vs DDs but today . . nope DDs win hands down

[Veldri]

I keep hearing of warlock AoEs and it might be that we get them at higher levels, at lvl 30 however, we got one "good" AE which is our lvl 20 spell Negative Absolution. At my level it hits for about 130-160 on white mobs and have a maximum of five targets. I think it has a three second casting time which isn't that bad but a horrible 30 second reuse which makes horrible for any serious AEing. I basically just pop that AE in the beginning of an AE pull and then proceed with single target nukes until the mobs are dead. All this might change at higher levels though, I just know that up to lvl 30 I have NEVER been able to keep up with wizards in AoE situations (I only got adept1 of my AEs though, dunno what the wizards had)./Veldrius

[killzo]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Veldrius wrote:<BR>I keep hearing of warlock AoEs and it might be that we get them at higher levels, at lvl 30 however, we got one "good" AE which is our lvl 20 spell Negative Absolution. At my level it hits for about 130-160 on white mobs and have a maximum of five targets. I think it has a three second casting time which isn't that bad but a horrible 30 second reuse which makes horrible for any serious AEing. I basically just pop that AE in the beginning of an AE pull and then proceed with single target nukes until the mobs are dead. All this might change at higher levels though, I just know that up to lvl 30 I have NEVER been able to keep up with wizards in AoE situations (I only got adept1 of my AEs though, dunno what the wizards had).<BR><BR>/Veldrius<BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Well, both Wizard and Warlock AoE sucks till 50.  At 50 Warlocks get Devastation which dishes out 500 plus another 4 ticks of 500 damage to up to 5 group members.  This is the kind of spell both classes should have in addition to a big 50 nuke.

[Veldri]

<blockquote><hr>killzone wrote:Well, both Wizard and Warlock AoE sucks till 50. At 50 Warlocks get Devastation which dishes out 500 plus another 4 ticks of 500 damage to up to 5 group members. This is the kind of spell both classes should have in addition to a big 50 nuke. <hr></blockquote>Well, I know about Devastation, I thought there were more AoE spells along the way and that the discussion regarded them. I definitely agree with you though, both classes should get a big boom nuke and a nice AoE at fifty, to top things off so to say (see Ice Comet and Supernova in EQ1 for example)./Veldrius