To make it more precise what I meant:
"physical weapons like swords, etc. deal more damage." ... I can see why you say that by looking at current-damage-formula-and-future-work
weapon min./max. damage:
Himmelmez Mace: 333~364
Himmelmez Rod: 424~479
Himmelmez Greatsword: 1303~1470
Himmelmez Spear:1215~1416
Himmelmez Bow: 1177~1288
So all the weapons of mages & co. have a much lower damage to start with. That's why these classes need a bonus to balance out the odds... and this is the additional MATK. If a player now looks only at the corresponding value on the character screen, he might think that magical classes are overpowered, but that's not the case. The MATK is divided roughly by 10 and then used as weapon damage bonus. So there might not be a damage difference in the end.
The MATK values created other balancing issues, but they aren't the main issue here
Take priest dots for example, Credo level 5 "224% of your magic atk every 2 seconds", okay this is a 5~7k dot per tick on dw mobs. Then my double attack "250% of your physical atk" okay that does a little over 900 on non crit to the same mobs. Both ml lvl 30 with +20 weapons. How do you explain this? Does the skill % even comparable in this case?
I already stated a bit earlier - quote: "Sure, there are broken things like Battle Tactics, DoTs or pets, but then it's advisable to address them in more detail."
That means, that these issues aren't directly connected to the AoE comparison. Increasing the damage of Rolling Cutter alone won't solve the DoT issue f.e. And of course, a Warrior with Battle Tactics and enough INT will deal more damage in the end. But that's why DoTs, BT, etc. need a seperate fix.
If you've read some of the other replies I've made, my "fix" is to reduce the overall defense rate to 20~40%.
But reality is different, have you grinded with a wizard/warrior/priest with your rogue in dw upper? You can see whose AoE do more damage. It's obvious and it's the reason people prefer those classes than rogues.
I've created this list to show that skills aren't just about raw damage multipliers. Just because one skill has 182% and another 588%, it doesn't necessarily mean that the damage output per second is different . Casting time, animation time and cooldown ought to be considered as well.
In general, the DPS (damage per second) ratio is better way to compare the effectiveness of skills. But if you look at these values, you'll see that neither the Rogue nor the Assassin have a drawback. It rather seems that the developers tried to kepp them balanced.
But the tricky part:
If the Rogue deals less damage than a Wizard in DW upper (your quote) hence the "balanced" DPS ratio, the damage Rolling Cutter can't be the cause. The base damage before skills has to be inbalanced already!
Example:
If the Rogue deals only half as much damage as a Wizard, Rolling Cutter isn't to blame. During the same period of time, a Rogue can use this skill at least 4 times as often as a Wizard can use Meteor Storm. Therefore - using the current multipliers - it's already at least 728% (4x182%) for the Rogue vs. 588%.for the Wizard. That means, the source of the inbalance as to be somewhere else!
So if you've recognized an inbalance between a Wizard and a Rogue, you should check the PSE (physical skill effect). You should see inbalance there.
But if the PSE is already different that much, EVERY skill of the Rogue would be subpar, not just Rolling Cutter.
Example:
If players are stating that the Rogue AoE is bad, all his other skills must be 'crap' as well. If a Rolling Cutter only deals half as much damage per second as a Meteor Storm, the Rogue's PSE value has to be only half as high. But if that's the case, a 1420% Moonlight Dance would also deal only half as much damage as a 1520% Flame Explosion.
I am not necessarily stating that you're wrong about existing grinding inbalances, I'm just using a "chain of facts" to find the cause. And that convinced me that changing the damage output of Rolling Cutter won't fix anything.
Again when comparing rogues with sins, let say all else is "fine" before the 250 penetration added. I'll ask again, what make you think they need that buff and rogue do not? Imo it just increase the dps gap further between the two classes, not closer.
Let's look at the facts: Although the Dual Daggers have slightly lower values, the Rogue will still ends up with the higher STR value, a higher crit chance, but less parry. The rogue will also have less hit, but more dodge thanks to the class-specific stat bonuses.. All in all, these differences aren't really significant.
There is also the difference between Heals vs. Damage Reduction, but we had this already.
So you could say that it all comes down to Unstable Doping vs. Shadow Form.
And this also answers your question - Both can get a +30% ATK bonus, but whereas the rogue can get +20% crit // +20% ATK on top, the Assassin gets a +30% speed instead. Generally spoken, it's more dps vs. higher speed. What was changed is that the Assassins get an additional DPS bonus (in form of armor penetration), whereas the Rogue gets a speed-modifying debuff.
So I leave it up to you to judge whether the speed debuff balances out the +250 penetration and whether the Doping triggers are such a burden over a passive boost, but it's the answer to your question: "what make you think they need that buff and rogue do not?" => the rogues got a speed debuff instead.
Edited by Greven79, 17 October 2014 - 08:10 AM.