Nah i don't find you rude and this is what forums are for, open discussion.
As i mentioned i personally never solo as i always run around with one of my GFs wizard weather she plays or not :P.
My playstyle is quite similar to pvp i guess wearing the enemy down taking minimum damage by using weakness which imo is on of the best spells balance has and i'm guessing 99% of pvp players will agree here.
Sure you can clear smaller mobs with ra and i guess that's fine if you solo sometimes even though CL is not suited for it and impossible to solo some bosses, so why bother? But that's me and i guess it's not everyone that has acces to always be in a grp of minimum 2 players 100% of the time either.
But as far as what have been mentioned several times not only by us "the short end of the stick" as referred to. Balance Ra spell is very weak compared to ALL the other lvl 58 spells.
Some may argue Snow angel or forest lord as it's less dmg then Ra.
Not in my eyes though as Snow angel is an aoe shield remover which is extremly powerfull and ok it taunts but hey in pve ice wizards are supposed to be the "tanks".
As for Forest lord, life has weaker attacks then everyone else as that's how the school is. But you have to remember that life has a stronger 40% blade and they finally have a minion killer spell now which in my eyes also makes it better then Ra.
I don't think i should need to explain why the other spells are better then Ra...just take a look at how crazy Efreet is and you have the answer. :D
Just a quick follow up now that I have Ra. The gear boosts are more generous than I had imagined. With only a balance blade and an amplify field, I routinely hit around 1900 with a gargantuan Ra. I now critical about a quarter of the time. If I use vengeance, I have yet to miss a critical, but I'm guessing it will eventually work out to 50%. I can now tell you with certainty, that it isn't a problem to solo with your Balance.
As I had asserted, Ra is an awesome spell for clearing a room. Combine that with the proper athame and ring to make healing hands a power house (it heals just shy of 300 per round for me now, 600 with a critical) and a well laid out deck and there is very little you can't solo. Sure, other classes get bigger blade boosts... we've been down that road before. But Ra is a good room clearing spell with very little effort in most situations. If you just cast two balance blades, then a sandstorm followed by Ra, Ice isn't a problem either.
In summary... Ra is a great addition to the Balance arsenal at its current level.
The balance spell has the range of a rank 6 spell. 560-640, right in the middle is 600, which is just about balance's average, 99.7 damage per pip.
If it gives no side affect, it should be 760-840, if not it should give some sort of special effect.
Yes, Yes, we understand all that, yet what you fail to realize, is that there is no shield to balance, there is no dispel. Now, you can add gargatuan +250 damage, plus Amplify either +15% or +20% to all attacks for 4 rounds, plus, balance blade, bladestorm, and if you smart, you got rid of useless Hydra, and got a pet with either DragonBlade +30 or a pet with Balance Blade which stacks with other balance blade, like my Pet, which has Balance it +5% accuracy, Spell Proof +9% shield to all attacks, Health Gift +120, and pips +5%. So, lets add that up. WOW Massive attack to all, that at most, you can tower shield? lol and people complain
Yes yes, we understand all that, but what you fail to realize is that balance is at an disadvantage even with this..
The 2 balance blades together, costing 1 pip total, does 45% more. Tower is 50, which brings the attack to -5%. Now, take for example a storm blade ( which gives the least amount of damage boost!) and an elemental blade, costing 1 pip. Then take an average glacial shield which takes the storm boost down to 0%, which is still more than balance.
Then take Myth and Fire, they get 10% more boost from shields, not to mention they can break through shields EXTREMELY easily, and dont tell me they cant, because I have a grandmaster in both of these..
Then take the rest of the schools which give 40%, which gives them a 15% more damage than balance...
And this is all fair because storm gets strongest attack so they get weakest boost, although a 5% is still helpful.
Fire and Myth get a big 10% boost, even though shields arent a big problem for them anyway.
The rest get 15% boost which makes up for their weaker attacks.
Now back to my point, a poster above me said that it was 91 damage per pip, and even if so, the average damage should be 735-740, rounded up and down. Therefore, at weakest Ra is 100 damage off what it should be.
And also, you make it sound like balance is the only one that can use balance blades and such... and also in your post all of your spells took 5+ rounds to set up.. thats a lot, dontya think?
Actually, I just re-read your post. Balance blade and bladestorm together comes out to a 50% boost, and should it hit a tower, you're down to 75% of the base hit strength. It doesn't sound like you know how it applies the math here. For your information, balance blade + bladestorm + tower shield would be figured like so:
1.25 x 1.20 x 0.50 = 0.75
If you have clothes, that figures in as well, like (assuming my clothing at +30%) so:
1.30 x 1.25 x 1.20 x 0.50 = 0.975
Does that make sense?
No.
The game calculates your boosts as multiples for each discreet entity (not additive), then uses the final multiplier against the damage, all beginning from a multiplier of 1. So...
1 x gear x balance blade x bladestorm x tower shield = multiplier would be:
1 x (1 + 30%) x (1 + 25%) x (1 + 20%) x (1 - 50%) = 97.5%
That multiplier would be applied to the damage total, so if the spell did say 475 base damage, the resulting damage would be about 463. Does that make more sense now?
I really wish they would give fire a bit more than they have. Fire has always been mediocre. They really need to give a huge improvement to them as well.
