Sorcerers, Bright Wizards and Resists

Frequently I find members of my guild asking why I’m down on sorcerers. To them we “seem fine” because I generally do a decent job when playing in guild groups. There is no denying that we’re pretty decent. This is especially true if we’re backed by players who know their job well. I simply refuse to accept that as “good enough” however.

My major contention is that we’re not where we should be. I say this not because I want to have “power extreme” but because of fundamental MMO design. Conventional wisdom is that the lighter your armor, the lower your base health and the less utility you provide the more damage you should do. In short: as survivability goes down damage goes up.

A quick look at the sorceress class should make it fairly clear that it isn’t very survivable. It is your traditional cloth armor caster. When it comes to spells it has a root that is pretty handy. The class also has a disarm that is touted as great (the long duration of the cast makes me disagree) and a half snare. I say half snare because you must first dot your target and then cast a second spell. All in all there is nothing too impressive there.

When it comes to utility the sorceress does a little better. This comes in the form of the “damage proc” buff Frozen Touch and the “damage shield” buff Daemonic Chill. These both add to the groups damage. Add a couple of decent tactics and the sorceress can augment your group as a whole in a reasonable way.

Finally, and this cannot be over looked, the sorceress does benefit from being ranged. Many people will try to down play this but it is a benefit. It is far more dangerous to melee than it is to range.

Given just those circumstances you have a decent argument that the sorceress should be the top tier damage class unless there is an equivalent version that is melee. This is further stressed by one additional feature, “backlash.” Both Bright Wizards and Sorcerers suffer from the ability to kill themselves. That, in my eyes, completely negates the bonus from ranged damage and then some. When a class is a danger to itself this adds another level of survivability that cannot be ignored. It is ironic that it is though. I am frequently asked in groups “what the heck is killing you?” I reply (and my soul dies a little each time), “me.”

I’ve seen plenty of people try to deny the danger of backlash but as both a sorceress and a witch elf player I have to say it is an issue. I never have to worry about my witch elf doing “one too many” attacks and blowing herself up. My witch elf never needs a healer when nobody is focused on her. Both of those occurrences are true for the sorcerer and bright wizard.

Despite the conventional wisdom that is out there, however, things have gotten worse for sorceresses and wizards since the nerf (please note that I don’t necessarily disagree with the nerf in full). With the adjustment to resists I feel we’re almost negated. Mythic’s current stance is “to raise your resists high enough to negate a magic damage class you’d have to seriously sacrifice other statistics.” As I’ve said time and again with itemization issues, they’re out of touch.

Sikonawt did some wonderful work on proving that you can raise resists without really damaging your class. On Warhammer Alliance he has a post titled “Debunking the myth that one has to sacrifice stats in order to stack resists” and I suggest you read it. Mythic is aware of it and we’ll have to see the outcome.

There is more work in this area as well. I’d almost call it laughable if it wasn’t so sad. Please note this is an “in a vacuum” situation but it is still telling. Caeli decided to test to see if a chosen with maxed resists could be defeated by a bright wizard. You should read his post. Essentially it comes down to this. The chosen just stood there and did nothing. Caeli was never able to kill that chosen prior to killing himself. That, to me, is amazing. I’m pretty confident every other class in the game can kill a target that doesn’t fight back. Although other magic based classes would find it hard.

In short I think people need to let go of their irrational distaste for the previously (and possibly still) over played dot based bright wizard. Additionally Mythic should never have allowed one specialization from a single class to essentially bring down two other specializations and the entire sorceress class. That is classic over reaction.

Now, as we always do, we’re waiting. Can we just skip the cycle of reduce six times and then increase twice three months later? I hope that sooner than later these two classes will return to what they’re intended to be: the primary damage dealer for their side undisputed. If they can’t be then their wonderful metric of backlash needs to go. Nobody is going to play a self destructive class long term that doesn’t bring something unique or superior to the table.