Melee Wizards with a Wand of Temporal Power

Melee Wizardry with a Wand of Temporal Power

A wizard who melees doing more damage than a wizard who meditates? You are crazy!

The commonly held belief on wizards in melee suggests that the wizard who melees is overall less effective than a wizard who does not. However, with the advent of high damage processes, particularly that of the Wand of Temporal power, this belief can be proven false in a variety of situations.

As a thought experiment, picture a wizard with a Wand of Temporal Power which chooses to melee instead of meditate.

We know that the process rate on a Wand of Temporal Power averages at 1 proc per 30 seconds. We also know that we gain 22 mana a tick for NOT meleeing, or 110 mana per 30 seconds. So what we have is a comparison of gains - 750 damage or 110 mana. Turn this into an equivalent nuke: 750 damage FOR 110 mana -- or 6.818 damage per mana.

On the other side of the equation we have Strike of Solusek, with Wrath of Ro, and Inferno of Sol. Using the average damage and average mana, this nuke is 3233 damage for 422 mana -- or 7.66 damage per mana.

At this point, it becomes obvious that the wizard who is meleeing is losing some amount of damage per minute. This number works out to be 92.6 damage per 30 seconds. However, LDoN offers a complexity to this problem: 150 damage process augmentations.

A Wand of Temporal Power with a Rujarkan Venom augmentation will process 2 times per 30 seconds on average -- once for 750 and once for 150. Using the same logic as previously, this becomes 900 damage for 110 mana, or 8.18 damage per mana.

So a wizard with an augmented Wand of Temporal Power actually gains more damage over time by meleeing instead of meditating (57.4 damage per 30 seconds in fact).

Turning the gains into "DPS" you find that the wizard who melees instead of meditates gains 1.91 dps over the wizard who meditates instead of melees.

Its a crazy world.

Interesting. Perhaps I should switch my 75hp lifetap on my wand of temporal power out with the rujarkian :p

That argument only applies if you start out oom.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xerkos

That argument only applies if you start out oom.

Like after a rez?

Besides, where in a crawl do you have time to sit down and meditate?

You are either crawling around or you are waiting for pulls to be brought in.

If you are crawling around, just melee along.

Absolutly true Xerkos, Only time I melee a mob is when its snared and turns around to run at low life. Why waste mana killing a mob at 1pct life when its snared and cant run away...

This argument applies any time you can take 2 unhasted melee swings consecutively, regardless of mana regen, current mana, or any other factor.

You do not, of course, want to leave melee on during the casting of a spell, because you lose melee rounds when casting, but any time you have 6 seconds uninterupted, it is more effective, with the items mentioned, to melee rather than meditate.

That's all well and good if you have a single target, or your targets are well spread out in time. You are going to have to med sometime, and in any kind of sustained fighting, you won't be able to augment your "melee" with very many damage spells, no matter how good your mana regen is.

That math applies even between nukes.

"delay time" advances at any time you aren't casting with autoattack on, for a robed caster, so that 2.25 recovery time eats up the delay on your wand.

And his math already factors in the fact you will be nuking less because you aren't medding. You won't have to "med sometime", you'll use your standing manaregen to cast nukes, and melee when you have less mana than that. You can med during downtime when there isn't a mob in camp to melee and you don't have to move.

Cute math. =)

Uhmm NO. If I wanted to melee I wouldn't havent started a wizard.

I'll stick to meleeing with a damn snake fang

I agree Nuukee. We have an excellent wizard in our guild and he loves to melee when he can and I know he does some great damage with his wand, but its just not for me. There is still a little bit of roleplay left in me. Valas, my 4th wizard in EQ stopped meleeing at level 2. Back then I could have soloed better in melee mode but I wanted to be a pure wizard and still do.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Varressa Evocara

On the other side of the equation we have Strike of Solusek, with Wrath of Ro, and Inferno of Sol. Using the average damage and average mana, this nuke is 3233 damage for 422 mana -- or 7.66 damage per mana.

If we are going to do best case scenarios and assume a time geared wizard I think we can assume a fire familiar and all the crit AA skills. Now we get basically 10 dmg/mana for SoS and 8 dmg/mana for the melee'n. And the melee'n has now lost, sit down and med. That being said, do what you want.

And, for a time geared wizard we can also reasonably assume a better nuke than SoS.

Before you get the Clear Fire effect for White Fire, Strike of Solusek is the most mana efficient spell there is. And crit AAs affect the melee procs the exact same as a spell -- so those balance.

In fact, even with Clear Fire for White Fire, the mana ratio is EXACTLY the same.

After crits (assuming 25%) are applied to both sides of the argument, you find that Melee delivers 10.22 damage per mana, and nuking delivers 9.58 damage per mana.

Also, if you are using Ro's Familiar, you are losing 8 mana a tick, so you really aren't gaining as much as you'd think. But lets follow this. In this case your best case scenario is pretty close to chain nuking at 4.6+2.25 = 6.85 seconds per cast..which, dropping .85 seconds in your favor makes this equivalent to 4384 damage for 430 mana or 10.2 damage per mana. Conclusion: Melee still wins, by such a small margin its not worth the effort.

If you drop the .85 seconds back into the equation it turns out to be 10.12 damage per mana, and melee wins by a larger margin

If you are using a Ro Flappy right, then you are using RFF + Chain Nuke till OOM, then Allegiant + Mana Robe till FM, and repeating the cycle. While in the Allegiant + Mana Robe part of the cycle, its most definitely more effective to melee, since that obeys all the rules of uninterupted melee (try it and see! :))

Do casters really crit on procs, cannot say I've ever heard one way or another.

Anyway, if we assume this and take away the 8 mana lost for the fire familiar the melee'n swings up to about 17 dmg/mana and is in the lead again.

But, I don't understand how you are saying Alle + Mana Robe is more effective. Basically, you cannot Mana Robe and get all your melee stikes in, which means you will not proc once every 30 seconds. I don't know how often our spell will interrupt your swing, but it will often enough to drop the proc rate.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yyidth

Anyway, if we assume this and take away the 8 mana lost for the fire familiar the melee'n swings up to about 17 dmg/mana and is in the lead again.

Crap, I added the crit dmg in wrong. Criting only gets you back to basically 10 dmg/mana with Alle and 15 dmg/mana Ro Fam. So melee'n is still ahead.

You do crit on procs, and there's a better wepaon for proc rate than the Wand of Temporal Power ;)

Which would be?

wasn't that the Kelp Hilted mace?

And the point you're all missing is that you do more damage as a melee with great gear than you do as a caster with great gear. Unless SoE does something drastic we are going to be marginalized again.
That they hate us is well known. They hate us quading. They hate us doing CC. They hate us doing long term damage.
We have no role in eq except what we with our imaginations have found through what seem by soe's thinking to be exploits.
At this point while I love my wizard I would reroll as a druid cheak that droods make my hair fall out. They are going to have all our abilities and clerics abilities plus a few enchanter abilities.
I mean Have I missed something? Did we get anything to make us as powerful as SoE seems to think we are? Look at this thread again, properly equipped a wizard can do more damage melee than med casting. We are suppose to be the masters of magical damage.
What I see is wizards going oom in the middle of long fights. Picking up there staves and doing more total damage with there staves than with spells.
Is that our future are we going to become a melee class? Having said something here will soe's response be to nerf our ability to melee?

Only time I melee is when my slower LDs and I have to whip out my Willsapper. God I love being a wizzy that can slow :)