Most of other casters I play don't require that kind of a set up. I mostly open with a big blast spell. With the arcane sorc, usually ancestral memories and a big blast spell. You want to open with the big hammer before your allies close so you can drop the heaviest blast you can with the least chance of affecting your allies.Well, to be fair, a Sorceror going with explosion of power and anoint ally does require some set up and faces some restrictions on how to place their blasts.
Not a lot, and you can work around the restrictions, but it's there.
This is true. And I do use Explosion of Power when close enough. Though my group does prefer to start fights from as far away as possible to soften targets.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I do think it is important to point out a couple of things about my take on casters:
1. The "best" caster for any campaign is going to be incredibly dependent upon they type of campaign it is and the way the GM runs everything from downtime, to exploration mode and encounter types. For example: there is a huge difference in the efficacy of spells that do damage over multiple rounds in campaigns where encounters can collapse onto each other, last for 8 to 10 rounds, and go potentially 10 encounters before the party can rest..and more PFS style adventures and campaigns where combat encounters tend to last 2 or 3 rounds at most and rarely push more than 3 or 4 encounters into any one given day of adventuring. Also factored into "campaign variance" includes optional rules that might be available, ease of access to scrolls, how much information a GM reveals on Recall Knowledge checks, expected levels of play, and how the GM handles things like conceal spell and how the people in the world react to spells being cast in the world around them. How far apart do enemies start in encounters? These are good things to ask about in a session 0, rather than to assume your GM will tell you before one aspect of this table variance pops up in play and doesn't break your way.
2. Blasting is only one thing casters can do, and casters don't need to be top tier blasters to be effective casters who also use blast spells occasionally. One of the things I like about the Spell substitution Wizard is the ability to prepare generally to be able to blast my way through the next encounter, and no more, because I can get buy with arcane bond and scrolls for the occasional combat stacked on top of another. As the day goes on, I can keep re-preparing spells, until I stop being able to blast my way through an encounter and then it is usually time to start talking to the party about where we are going to rest.
3. Typically, on these forums, when people are talking about blasting, they are talking exclusively about damage and the...
Personally, I'm more interested in how casters play in a group. In my groups, the martials really don't wait for a lot of setup. They rush in and start hammering in a coordinated fashion after maybe a soften up blast or two. Once the creatures are softened, they go to town.
The number of casts you get will very much depend on your group tactics and the competence of your martial players. If your martials are well built and kill fast, you won't have to cast that much.
This is a group game. I tend to judge classes by roles they fill, how well they contribute to group success, and how competitive they are with another class competing for their role.
Cycle of Souls into Channeler's Stance + vessel spell + sustained apparition spell is exactly a round long, though, and can be easily staggered across rounds thanks to Cycle of Souls letting you Sustain a vessel or apparition spell cast prior as a free action. Hungry depths and invoke spirits are two examples of perfectly valid apparition spells to use, and as mentioned already, those spells would be force-multiplied by the Animist's feats. I think it also stands to reason that damage from lower-rank apparition spells is still better than no damage at all.
Finally, as YuriP themself mentions, other cited builds require setup to a degree that actually places the unmeasured action economy advantage in the Animist's favor at the moment. I therefore see no reason to discount this part of the Animist's damage output when the very purpose of this exercise is to see just how much damage each build can lay down when firing on all cylinders.
So one thing that is finally clicking for me is that there is a huge difference in what an animist can do at level 18+ and what they can do the rest of the game, and that at levels 19+, Your number of "top rank" spell slot spells is pretty equally terrible for every caster, so suddenly the top spell slot spells don't matter all that much any more and it is primarily focus spells that are going to maximally benefit from something like channeler's stance.
Just remember that something like Invoke spirits for your first round 2 action spell, even up cast to rank 9 is doing like 29 points of damage to a 10ft burst, while a generic rank 9 falling stars spell does 82 points of damage, so is going to have to last and be useful for 3 rounds before even equaling a more traditional pure blasting spell Damage output.
Trying to "flood the box" by sustaining as many spells that force saves each round as possible to trigger Cardinal Guardian is probably the best way to make that feat do anything for you, but you will still need to keep at least 2 apparitions around to ever be able to use it so it really doesn't play well with apparition's quickening, especially not for a character who has built themself to be a blaster.
Edit: I have never really had an interest in playing a witch, but it sounds like the sustaining, damage over time animist really is playing as a witch, not a blaster caster sorcerer or wizard.
It does, and by quite a bit. To be clear, what I am explaining is that Dancing Invocation, in combination with Elf Step, allows you to Sustain earth's bile and a second apparition spell, like hungry depths or invoke spirits. That second spell is missing from your calculations, which makes for a pretty big damage gap, and because you can have apparition spells from different apparitions dealing damage in quick succession, you can end up applying Cardinal Guardian's benefits to all of those spells, while triple-dipping into Channeler's Stance.Thanks for the suggestion.
Cardinal Guardians is pretty complicated to apply due to its need to cast an apparition spell of a different apparition from what you used to “trigger” it. In practice, this means that the available list is pretty small because I have to avoid weaker damage spells that debuffs at the same time or have their damage reduced due to some AoE or non-friendly fire aspect. I will try to do a new line with them.
About Dancing Invocation, it doesn't affect your DPR at all. At maximum could be considered as defensively because you can step away from enemies, but there's no way to put this in a DPR calculation. It was, as I said in notes. All these consider that the caster don't need to use move action, and it's fully focused into do damage. It's too different from Effortless Concentration that turns an entire Sustain action into a free action, freeing your 3rd action to use as you want, including to do more damage.
It's an idea, but honestly I don't think that the setup time of this worth and these spells have a pretty bad heightening.
For example, imagine a level 13 animist casting Hungry Depths. It's a 3 action sustainable spell. So the only thing that you can do in this turn is to cast it. You probably want to cast it under the effect of Channeler's Stance, but this will require another action so you will have to need another round of setup time. You can avoid this using Apparition's Quickening but unless you are level 15 you can only do this once per day (because you don't want to sacrifice Steward of Stone and Fire because you require it to use Earth's Bile nor can disperse Lurker in Devouring Dark because you require it to cast the own Hungry Depths) to in your next round be able to cast Earth's Bile while you sustain Hungry Depths. But as a blaster, what will you do with your last action now?
The other alternative is to cast both Hungry Depths and Invoke Spirits, but this would make the setup way larger. Now you can't use Apparition's Quickening anymore because you require all your 3 apparitions to this work, so:
Starting at level 15 you can diminish this setup time by one round sacrificing your fourth apparition to use Apparition's Quickening, but at the same time all these spells doesn't heighten at this rank. So it isn't just better to just thrown some Volcanic Eruptions and divine blast spells and kill some enemies sooner instead?
I can try to represent all this setup time into the PF2e Calculator, but this will require that I also repeated the actions of other classes too (what's too boring) to a thing that I really doubt that will be efficient.
Hang on: why is it then that the Elemental Sorcerer gets a full round to cast elemental body and only then have their full blast damage counted, but spending the same action cost casting invoke spirits is off the table? If you don't want to make time for setup, then show what it's like for that Elemental Sorcerer to cast that single ignition spell on the turn when they've cast fiery body and we can see for ourselves how good that really is. If you do want to show setup, however, then there is no reason to include one and omit the other.
Also, I meant to address Disintegrate earlier, but didn’t get to it.
Disintegrate is not a general purpose blasting spell. It is really nearly just a utility spell that has a couple of niche blasting uses. I can try to run math on it later but an imperial sorcerer using ancestral memories on the fort save and a hero point to make sure it lands is probably its best case scenario.
Spirit blast, specifically at rank 6 is a very strong single target blasting option. The 30ft range makes it a riskier option than I like on my blasting spells, but it is very good. It doesn’t feel good enough to offset all the levels at which a divine lacks good blasting options, but it does help the list a lot.
While disintegrate does carry a nice bit of utility, it is also quite obviously a spell made for blasting, and is one of the iconic arcane spells out there with contingency. The fact that it has multiple points of optimization, e.g. boosting the spell attack's accuracy along with boosting the enemy's failure chances on the save, is a nice touch that fits well with the theme of arcane magic. It just so happens that spirit blast is a much more directly effective option, and execute an even stronger direct damage option afterwards.
As for not feeling like this makes up for the lack of good divine blasting options at lower levels: that's perfectly valid. I too would like better divine blasting options at low level, and in particular I would appreciate better parity between harm and heal, as heal is by far the better spell and harm's two-action effect sucks at actually harming people. However, I do still think this shows that at those higher levels where those blast spells become available, the divine list is in fact very good at blasting, and along with the primal list it loses a lot of the limitations it has at lower levels by virtue of having many more spells that do different things well.
While disintegrate does carry a nice bit of utility, it is also quite obviously a spell made for blasting, and is one of the iconic arcane spells out there with contingency. The fact that it has multiple points of optimization, e.g. boosting the spell attack's accuracy along with boosting the enemy's failure chances on the save, is a nice touch that fits well with the theme of arcane magic. It just so happens that spirit blast is a much more directly effective option, and execute an even stronger direct damage option afterwards.
As for not feeling like this makes up for the lack of good divine blasting options at lower levels: that's perfectly valid. I too would like better divine blasting options at low level, and in particular I would appreciate better parity between harm and heal, as heal is by far the better spell and harm's two-action effect sucks at actually harming people. However, I do still think this shows that at those higher levels where those blast spells become available, the divine list is in fact very good at blasting, and along with the primal list it loses a lot of the limitations it has at lower levels by virtue of having many more spells that do different things well.
At rank 6, Thunderstrike significantly out performs disintegrate as a blast spell without a lot of manipulation of factors like off-guard, status bonuses to attack, and debuffing. Disintegrate is not the default single target arcane blasting spell. I have never seen anyone present it as the standard to measure arcane blasting with.
It sounds like you may not have seen many discussions like this if you can't conceive of disintegrate being used to blast, which I'd say isn't entirely uncommon given its synergy with sure strike. I will point out as well that a 6th-rank thunderstrike deals 54 average damage next to spirit blast's 56, so the divine list remains ahead at that rank for reliable burst damage when not going against metal elementals. As previously mentioned, this is also surpassed in the immediate subsequent rank by execute, whose per-rank scaling exceeds thunderstrike's while also having the added benefit of being exceedingly consistent in its damage output.
It is the 30ft range on both spirit blast and execute that limit them from being first round blasting spells to count on as every encounter blast spells. They are good, I am not denying that, and they improve the divine list for blasting.
I am very familiar with discussions about blasting. I’ve been in almost every single one of them in these message boards since the PF2 playtest. I think there are ways to make Disintigrate work, but it is extremely situational and requires a lot of set up to avoid rounds of feeling like you did absolutely nothing. It is pretty critical, before even talking about sure strike, to get your accuracy on the spell attack roll of Disintigrate good enough to the point where you can crit on more than a 20. It is a good spell for clearing out minion casters (who tend to have bad fort saves) as it is one of the few spells that can pretty easily one or two shot a level -1 or -2 creature, but people generally want AoE in fights with multiple enemies and chain lighting is the same rank.
I don't think being unable to cast either of those spells is that big a deal, though, because divine wrath is another divine blasting spell with a 120-foot range that sickens enemies on a failed save. You may in fact even want to use divine wrath even when enemies are within 30 feet on the first round (which, in my experienced in most APs, is extremely common), simply because it softens enemies up.
Divine Wrath is a very powerful blasting spell. The sickened rider is great. Damage is moderate and does not double. The critical fail is even worse with a sicken 2 and slowed 1 while sickened. And you can cast it while your allies are engaged as it only hits enemies. It's a high quality blast spell in my experience.
At rank 6, Thunderstrike significantly out performs disintegrate as a blast spell without a lot of manipulation of factors like off-guard, status bonuses to attack, and debuffing. Disintegrate is not the default single target arcane blasting spell. I have never seen anyone present it as the standard to measure arcane blasting with.
Does it?
I can agree with outperform, but significantly? Average damage is 54 for Thunderstrike and 55 for Disintegrate .
On the plus side for Thunderstrike is that it is a save spell, so only one roll. However, its damage is split between two types, meaning that there are two ways damage can be reduced, and Electricity Resist is not all that uncommon with higher-level enemies.
Disintegrate needs to hit, and then there's a Fort save. Those are downsides, absolutely. No one would debate that. However, its damage is untyped. That means basically nothing resists it, and anything that does is [i also[/i resisting both parts of Thunderstrike!
However, on top of that, the 'manipulating of factors' for the to hit is *already happening to help the melee!*. If anything, it's giving those normal things like trip more impact, since now it also helps the caster, and it's going to get easier with Guardian setting things off-guard via taunt.
I will agree a lot of the time that Thunderstrike is a better choice. However, I do not think the difference is significant, and depending on the group and enemy matchup, Disintegrate is the better option.
And that is good. Different situations having different answers is what makes a game interesting. It's boring to do the same thing the same way every time.
Just to nitpick, average is 65 for disintegrate, not 55.
Also, an interesting thing is that it’s not a death spell while the text hints at it.
Also, an interesting thing is that it’s not a death spell while the text hints at it.
You point your finger at the lich, and fire a little black bolt that on contact, magnifies into a beam of pure destructive force. A flash of blinding light fills the room as every molecule in the lich is reduced to its component atoms... and leaves it completely unscathed, as it is immune to death effects.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Interestingly Starfinder 2e left Disintegrate without the death trait but did add it to the very similar Promession (do no save cold damage on hit, then save for additional sonic damage - grind to dust if reduced to zero). It's hard to see why a daemon would be immune to cold/sonic delivered in such a fashion.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
At rank 6, Thunderstrike significantly out performs disintegrate as a blast spell without a lot of manipulation of factors like off-guard, status bonuses to attack, and debuffing. Disintegrate is not the default single target arcane blasting spell. I have never seen anyone present it as the standard to measure arcane blasting with.Does it?
I can agree with outperform, but significantly? Average damage is 54 for Thunderstrike and 55 for Disintegrate .
On the plus side for Thunderstrike is that it is a save spell, so only one roll. However, its damage is split between two types, meaning that there are two ways damage can be reduced, and Electricity Resist is not all that uncommon with higher-level enemies.
Disintegrate needs to hit, and then there's a Fort save. Those are downsides, absolutely. No one would debate that. However, its damage is untyped. That means basically nothing resists it, and anything that does is [i also[/i resisting both parts of Thunderstrike!
However, on top of that, the 'manipulating of factors' for the to hit is *already happening to help the melee!*. If anything, it's giving those normal things like trip more impact, since now it also helps the caster, and it's going to get easier with Guardian setting things off-guard via taunt.
I will agree a lot of the time that Thunderstrike is a better choice. However, I do not think the difference is significant, and depending on the group and enemy matchup, Disintegrate is the better option.
And that is good. Different situations having different answers is what makes a game interesting. It's boring to do the same thing the same way every time.
Disintegrate just isn't that good in a typical situation because of the two rolls being required for it to work. It's literally the #1 spell in my games for "a player with D&D/PF1 experience gets it, casts it, gets a hit, and then is disappointed by the outcome because the creature makes the save."
It's got too many points of failure and requires you to tilt the odds well in your favor to make it actually work semi-reliably. These days I hardly see anyone even taking it anymore, in favor of spells that work more reliably.
When you're using high rank spell slots, requiring what amounts to two rolls in your favor to get a good outcome is just plain worse than only requiring one roll in your favor.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I mean, Disintegrate can have some big moments, but it is just rarely the moments people think of when they imagine casting it to awesome results.
If you can't get the accuracy past the inflection point of being able to crit on at least a 19, then even with a sure strike your odds of getting a critical result on the attack roll are only 9.75% (at 19 they jump to 19%, and at 18 they jump to 27.75%). Surestrike reduces your odds of doing no damage (which is where Disintegrate really feels disappointing to have cast), but even when you get to that hit on a 9/crit on a 19, your odds of doing nothing with the spell are still at 16%, and this is the first accuracy point where your odds of getting a crit are higher than your odds of missing entirely (with sure strike. Without it you need to hit on a 5, to accomplish equal odds of getting a critical hit and missing entirely, which is where I think the idea of sure strike equalling a +5 comes from, even though it isn't exactly true).
The damage dice of disintegrate are good enough that you will usually feel good about having cast it if you can land that critical hit on the spell attack roll, although against really tough, higher level, high fort creatures (like the Diabolic Dragon I looked at earlier) you still might be in a situation where the creature has a 25% or better chance of only taking half damage and that awesome feeling of having rolled a crit on a spell attack roll gets wiped out.
I think one of the most difficult parts of using it in combat is that you kind of need to know that your enemy's fort save isn't their high save, and that their AC isn't ridiculously high to make it worth casting the spell, but you also pretty much need three actions to cast the spell (if you want to get the surestrike benefit) so either the whole party is helping recall knowledge, knocking the creature prone and maybe demoralizing it before you cast your spell...or you have a fairly good chance of doing no damage at all, especially against the higher level solo monster that feels like the creature you are supposed to throw your best single target damage spells at.
Just look at that level 11 sorcerer vs the level 13 Mirage Dragon (who doesn't even have that high of a fort save). With no softening the target up, disintegrate has a 36 percent chance of missing entirely (even cast with surestrike) on the spell attack roll, to only a 9.75% of getting a critical hit. Then, if you just regularly hit it (which you will about 54% of the time) you still have a 25% chance of the Dragon making a critically successful save (because of that brutal +2 to save vs arcane spells) and taking no damage. Wasting 2 spells and a whole turns worth of actions doing no damage to a creature 2 levels higher than you can be very bad news for the whole party. That sorcerer casting a rank 5 Force Barrage spell is meanwhile likely to do about 36 points of damage and has no chance of doing no damage to the creature. (which puts it pretty much exactly on par with a rank 6 Thunderstrike, so probably the better option against such a P.I.A. enemy for an arcane caster.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
That is the math heavy Disintegrate analysis. The more practical in play analysis I have seen twice is,
Player: "Ooh I hit!"
GM: "The creature critically succeeds their fort save."
Player: "I am never casting that spell again."
One of which was after a player spent a hero point to turn a miss into a hit.
That is the math heavy Disintegrate analysis. The more practical in play analysis I have seen twice is,
Player: "Ooh I hit!"
GM: "The creature critically succeeds their fort save."
Player: "I am never casting that spell again."One of which was after a player spent a hero point to turn a miss into a hit.
The magus is usually better at disintegrate or the Spell Combination wizard at level 20.
Otherwise, it's very situational. I do like it for destroying walls. Enemies use walls too. They can be a pain.
I went ahead and added a scenario to my math notes of what would happen in the level 11 imperial sorcerer vs level 13 Mirage Dragon, if the Sorcerer cast disintegrate against a dragon who had been made flat-footed and debuffed by 1 (maybe frightened with a demoralized) and the Sorcerer got a +1 status bonus to their attack roll. This is what it would take to magically make the Spell attack roll succeed on a 9 vs the Dragon, and is relatively feasible to happen. The damage on Disintegrate jumps from essential 29 points on average with a plain disintegrate to about 44, leap frogging the Thunderstrike result (and force barrage) and getting pretty close to the 48 points of the Animist.
The Animist would still be ahead 5 turns to 6 (as far as turns necessary to reduce the dragon to 0, but it shaves 1 turn off of Thunderstrike and 2 off of an unbuffed disintegrate.
Also all of that work would only have reduced the save modifier by 1 for both the animist and the Thunderstrike Sorcerer, so while they both would do more damage too, it wouldn't come close to the boost experienced by buffed Disintegrate Sorcerer, and those are the kinds of buffs and debuffs that are help martial players and are pretty common for parties to do for each other, and the AC target number could have been approximated by martial attacks if you delayed to benefit from all the buffing.
So yes, I agree that having a Disintegrate as an available option can be nice, but it is kinda costly for other sorcerers to have in their repertoire and feels more like a wizard spell than a sorcerer one generally. However, the Imperial sorcerer does get it for free, so it is not competing with something like chain lightning. But past rank 6 do you really put a signature slot on it? or just keep it at level 6 and use it for utility object destruction? Maybe that depends on if you are in a party that really does a lot of buffing of attack rolls and debuffing of AC, because otherwise I think I would make chain lightning my rank 6 signature spell.
I don't think it is generally a good idea to use Disintegrate as the arcane spell for blasting comparison purposes because its numbers shift so wildly around different accuracy numbers.
I went ahead and added a scenario to my math notes of what would happen in the level 11 imperial sorcerer vs level 13 Mirage Dragon, if the Sorcerer cast disintegrate against a dragon who had been made flat-footed and debuffed by 1 (maybe frightened with a demoralized) and the Sorcerer got a +1 status bonus to their attack roll. This is what it would take to magically make the Spell attack roll succeed on a 9 vs the Dragon, and is relatively feasible to happen. The damage on Disintegrate jumps from essential 29 points on average with a plain disintegrate to about 44, leap frogging the Thunderstrike result (and force barrage) and getting pretty close to the 48 points of the Animist.
The Animist would still be ahead 5 turns to 6 (as far as turns necessary to reduce the dragon to 0, but it shaves 1 turn off of Thunderstrike and 2 off of an unbuffed disintegrate.Also all of that work would only have reduced the save modifier by 1 for both the animist and the Thunderstrike Sorcerer, so while they both would do more damage too, it wouldn't come close to the boost experienced by buffed Disintegrate Sorcerer, and those are the kinds of buffs and debuffs that are help martial players and are pretty common for parties to do for each other, and the AC target number could have been approximated by martial attacks if you delayed to benefit from all the buffing.
So yes, I agree that having a Disintegrate as an available option can be nice, but it is kinda costly for other sorcerers to have in their repertoire and feels more like a wizard spell than a sorcerer one generally. However, the Imperial sorcerer does get it for free, so it is not competing with something like chain lightning. But past rank 6 do you really put a signature slot on it? or just keep it at level 6 and use it for utility object destruction? Maybe that depends on if you are in a party that really does a lot of buffing of attack rolls and...
I keep it at rank 6 for utility destruction. That's what is most useful for day to day use.
Are you doing a casting strategy thread or was this it?
No this isn’t the larger caster strategy write up, but I am keeping the math notes elsewhere so I don’t have to come back and try to find them in forum posts. Blasting is only one part of the caster experience for sure.
I made a new whiteroom DPR comparison between some animist and sorcerers. Now I consider them after 3 rounds casting in order to see the effectiveness of setup sustained spells and stances.
Some notes again:
Sustain spells aren't near as good as they look on paper in play. Damage is too slow and fights are too fast in group play. I tried them a lot thinking the would be great when picking up Effortless Concentration. But the martials also become very powerful at high level and wreck stuff fast so you barely get to sustain much before everything is wrecked.
I'd almost rather than have higher damage sustain spells you can only sustain for 3 rounds or something. That would probably have more impact then a spell sustained for 1 minute that maybe lasts a few rounds as the martials wreck everything.
If the level 20 sorcerer goes with a Falling stars for the first round against average saves, that is 83.6 damage with the spell plus the 34.875 from the elemental toss is pretty close to 118.5.
I think we are under estimating how much damage a sorcerer could do with 3 rounds, even following up with rank 9 spells.
Sustain spells aren't near as good as they look on paper in play. Damage is too slow and fights are too fast in group play. I tried them a lot thinking the would be great when picking up Effortless Concentration. But the martials also become very powerful at high level and wreck stuff fast so you barely get to sustain much before everything is wrecked.
I'd almost rather than have higher damage sustain spells you can only sustain for 3 rounds or something. That would probably have more impact then a spell sustained for 1 minute that maybe lasts a few rounds as the martials wreck everything.
Sustain is tempting for those who want to save their spellslots.
One of the negative effects of the spellslot system is that's pretty hard to manage and predict them than it's to manage resources like MP, focus points, reagents/vials, gold...
When a player has a linear large resource it simply manage it like “OK, I still have more than half (or any other threshold) of it so I can use it without much worry” and only start to worry and save this resource when you notice that you will need it later, and it is starting to become scarce. But when you have a two-dimensional resource like spell spellslots where each deals with a different set of spells and if you use 2 of these slots you notice that you already used half of the available slots of that rank, and you still have an unknown number of enemies to face you start to worry about these resources. No mater if you have many lower ranks of spellslots that aren't your top rank, they are weaker and they are also few.
Then when many of these players see a way to using only one of their spellslots they are able to make it endures and be useful during your entire encounter it's easier to them to consider such options as a powerful way to save your resources while still use them for almost every encounter without to worries to micromanagement them.
That's why, even knowing that the efficiency is smaller with they may risk prolonging the encounter making setups, it's still too tempting to not just cast a sustainable spell that will constantly do damage per round instead of risk to use half of their top level spellslots and after this face more stronger enemies with even less resources.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
This whole discussion has broken down somewhat and I feel the original question has been answered.
"In the remaster, can Divine now be used for blasting?"
The answer is yes. The math doesn't lie, you can be an effective blaster while also providing MANY additional benefits to the party like great buffs, healing, and options like raise dead.
The foundation of this thread was not "Is animist the best blaster in the game?" or "Is animist better than sorcerer now?" They are both potent blasters in their own right and both have pro's and cons. Like, sure, imperial and elemental sorcerer have great focus spells they can use to augment and improve their blasting to burst down foes relatively quickly. But since Earth's Bile is both sustained for additional round after round effects and can be sustained via step action while also letting you use elf step to sustain two spells simultaneously while repositioning around the field.. you can see that focus point efficiency handily goes to the animist... but does that actually answer the original question?
After level 5 divine casters have access to a variety of great blasting spells and any that are forced to target AC can be modified using a shadow signet anyway.
So, question answered.. case close?
Well as the OP of a thread titled “Blasting Remastered: what has changed since the remasters + newer books?” And several different questions asked in that original post, only one of them about the divine spell list, I wouldn’t say case closed on the whole thread. Nothing has been presented to me that moves divine higher than 3rd for blasting as the classes that use it tend to have to get spells from other lists to blast effectively and the blast spells on the divine list tend to be very short range. It got better, and there are classes that use it that can be good blasters, so maybe it is not a valuable point of debate any way. More important than spell list for building a true blaster, and not just generally an effective caster who can occasionally blast is lots of high rank spell slots. A lot of people would add a third action activity that contributes to the DPR, but with enough slots force barrage already fills that roll adequately for blasting.
Sustain spells aren't near as good as they look on paper in play. Damage is too slow and fights are too fast in group play. I tried them a lot thinking the would be great when picking up Effortless Concentration. But the martials also become very powerful at high level and wreck stuff fast so you barely get to sustain much before everything is wrecked.
I'd almost rather than have higher damage sustain spells you can only sustain for 3 rounds or something. That would probably have more impact then a spell sustained for 1 minute that maybe lasts a few rounds as the martials wreck everything.
Sustain is tempting for those who want to save their spellslots.
One of the negative effects of the spellslot system is that's pretty hard to manage and predict them than it's to manage resources like MP, focus points, reagents/vials, gold...
When a player has a linear large resource it simply manage it like “OK, I still have more than half (or any other threshold) of it so I can use it without much worry” and only start to worry and save this resource when you notice that you will need it later, and it is starting to become scarce. But when you have a two-dimensional resource like spell spellslots where each deals with a different set of spells and if you use 2 of these slots you notice that you already used half of the available slots of that rank, and you still have an unknown number of enemies to face you start to worry about these resources. No mater if you have many lower ranks of spellslots that aren't your top rank, they are weaker and they are also few.
Then when many of these players see a way to using only one of their spellslots they are able to make it endures and be useful during your entire encounter it's easier to them to consider such options as a powerful way to save your resources while still use them for almost every encounter without to worries to micromanagement them.That's why, even knowing that the efficiency is smaller with they may risk prolonging...
I do like to use phantom orchestra once level 6 slots become plentiful and I get Effortless Concentration.
Prior to that I tend to fall back on cantrips and a weapon shot per round. I'm not even sure most sustain spells do more damage than a fully built out weapon.
I made a new whiteroom DPR comparison between some animist and sorcerers. Now I consider them after 3 rounds casting in order to see the effectiveness of setup sustained spells and stances.
That said animist trying to sustain Hungry Depths + Invoke Spirits + Earth Bile was considerably weak even in Channeler's Stance. Try stack multiple sustainable spells simply doesn't work well for animists (at last, while we still have such low number of apparitions).
I still have a few questions:
Really, it looks like you're making life unnecessarily complicated for yourself by tying yourself up in knots over avoiding just adding one Sustain to one of your other Animist comparisons. That is the whole point of the Elf Step combo on the Liturgist. Even without it, however, the Animist is still right up there with the best blasters, so the Animist is in fact one of the best blasters around.
I made a new whiteroom DPR comparison between some animist and sorcerers. Now I consider them after 3 rounds casting in order to see the effectiveness of setup sustained spells and stances.
That said animist trying to sustain Hungry Depths + Invoke Spirits + Earth Bile was considerably weak even in Channeler's Stance. Try stack multiple sustainable spells simply doesn't work well for animists (at last, while we still have such low number of apparitions).
I still have a few questions:
Where is Cardinal Guardians?
Why did you choose to interpret Sustaining hungry depths or invoke spirits as Sustaining both?
Where is Elf Step coming in as an action compressor here? Even assuming you're Sustaining three spells as an Animist, that still leaves a dangling action. Really, it looks like you're making life unnecessarily complicated for yourself by tying yourself up in knots over avoiding just adding one Sustain to one of your other Animist comparisons. That is the whole point of the Elf Step combo on the Liturgist. Even without it, however, the Animist is still right up there with the best blasters, so the Animist is in fact one of the best blasters around.
Is someone saying otherwise? It's pretty obvious you can build a great blaster with an animist.
Blue Frog already did it. He stated his strategy and it looked effective to me.
I'm more dubious that an animist can be a competitive martials or overshadow well built martials. I think the animist is better built as a blaster with some additional tricks.
The Animist’s blasting potential was in fact called into question on a number of occasions in the past, yes. Even when people were starting to concede that the class could blast, they still tried to argue that they fell significantly behind the Sorcerer. Now that we’re starting to draw more accurate (but still incomplete) comparisons of what the Animist can do, it’s becoming apparent that even with those components missing, they still rival the best dedicated blaster builds in the game.
I think you can build a pretty powerful animist with Quicken Apparition Spell, Channeler's Stance, and Earth's Bile. I specced that out and it looks really strong.
Another Remastery change that hurt the arcane and primal list for blasting is the change of Polar Ray to Arctic Rift.
Arctic Rift is a very, very different spell than Polar Ray. Polar Ray was kind of like Divine Wrath in that it isn't really a strong pure blasting spell by itself, but it is ok as a hybrid blast and debuff spell. The combination of affecting both HP and Fort saves with a spell attack roll spell had a lot of useful niche applications that hurt to lose if a GM says that Arctic Rift completely replaces it and Polar Ray isn't a spell anymore. Polar Ray was a pretty decent first round set up spell for later fort targeting blasting or debuffing.
Arctic Rift overtly does more damage, can target multiple creatures, and can debuff with slow and potentially immobilize, so some players might think it the better spell overall, but rank 6 slow is so much more reliable for debuffing multiple enemies that it would take a lot of unlikely situations to line up for the damage done by Arctic Rift to ever be worth casting when you were primarily trying to slow your enemies by casting it.
I feel the same way about what happened with Acid Arrow turning into Acid Grip. A lot of people just see the change from spell attack roll to saving throw as a net gain, because you get the extra damage from successful results, but when a spell adds a rider on a hit, there can be a lot of situations where the ability to tilt AC and attack rolls made landing those riders a lot easier than having to be able to target a specific save with the rider you are trying to land.
The movement away from spell attack roll spells in the remastery hurts the arcane list the most, because they also get surestrike, but even if you are just able to spend a hero point to help an attack roll spell land, there are many occasions where it was useful for divine, primal and arcane lists to have a handful of niche spell attack roll spells. Divine keeping theirs while Arcane and Primal mostly lost theirs was a blow to arcane and divine blasting.
Another weird thing I noticed today is that probably the meanest, most unfair spell in the game (which I am not saying as a bad thing) is that there is probably no better and more evil way for a GM to kill a PC than to have an Imperial Sorcerer NPC hit someone at the right level difference with an ancestral memories and the Massacre spell. At least PCs have hero points, but against a lower fortitude caster, the odds of instant death with that set up can easily climb into the 25% or even 30% range.
It can be an absolutely brutal crowd clearer for a PC caster too (doing more average damage than any other blast spell will approach), but the set level blocks on it (where it just flat out does nothing, instead of having the incapacitate trait) make it pretty unwieldy to use in actually play for players.
And lastly, the real deal breaker that might sink the arcane list if the GM doesn't allow any legacy spells is the loss of the power word spells, especially power word kill. One action, 50 points of automatic damage with no save was one of the best 3rd action damage options in the game. I have actually never played a high level arcane caster in a game where the GM didn't allow the power word spells and that might be the thing that would make me decide not to play an arcane caster if a GM was running a no legacy content campaign that was going to high level.
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Okay, so what changed for blasting (divine) with the remaster? A lot.
- Alignment damage turns mostly into spirit damage. This is big for clerics of neutral deities. Previously divine casters struggled against neutral enemies and struggled if their deities were neutral. Not an issue anymore. Only constructs are problematic now.
- Many of those spirit damage effects got a clause saying they only hurt enemies. This distinguishes divine blasting because it's way better at point-blank blasting. Compare that to a fireball you have to awkwardly place because your martials are trying to flank the enemy.
- Non-cleric casters no longer have an automatic path to trigger weaknesses of fiends. Previously, if they'd worship the right deity, they could do so. Now, they may actually get a cleric or champion dedication to get sanctified. Considering that fiends are a common enemy in many APs, this is a significant damage issue.
Overall I think the changes especially benefit clerics. Other classes need a bit of effort to capture the sanctification benefits, but it's not too hard. But divine went from a list that struggled with narrow damage types that many enemies were immune to, to a list that can hurt most enemies very reliably.
...Well as the OP of a thread titled “Blasting Remastered: what has changed since the remasters + newer books?” And several different questions asked in that original post, only one of them about the divine spell list, I wouldn’t say case closed on the whole thread. Nothing has been presented to me that moves divine higher than 3rd for blasting as the classes that use it tend to have to get spells from other lists to blast effectively and the blast spells on the divine list tend to be very short range. It got better, and there are classes that use it that can be good blasters, so maybe it is not a valuable point of debate any way. More important than spell list for building a true blaster, and notThis whole discussion has broken down somewhat and I feel the original question has been answered.
"In the remaster, can Divine now be used for blasting?"
The answer is yes. The math doesn't lie, you can be an effective blaster while also providing MANY additional benefits to the party like great buffs, healing, and options like raise dead.
The foundation of this thread was not "Is animist the best blaster in the game?" or "Is animist better than sorcerer now?" They are both potent blasters in their own right and both have pro's and cons. Like, sure, imperial and elemental sorcerer have great focus spells they can use to augment and improve their blasting to burst down foes relatively quickly. But since Earth's Bile is both sustained for additional round after round effects and can be sustained via step action while also letting you use elf step to sustain two spells simultaneously while repositioning around the field.. you can see that focus point efficiency handily goes to the animist... but does that actually answer the original question?
After level 5 divine casters have access to a variety of great blasting spells and any that are forced to target AC can be modified using a shadow signet anyway.
So, question answered.. case close?
I think it is ok that a discussion about a class like the Animist, that is essentially only 2/3s divine 1/3 other lists (that can change daily) is going to complicate a question about how effective the divine list itself is for pure blasting. It is even good for people with different perspectives to present their ideas and for the community to examine those ideas and share their reflections about them.
For example, which is the better blasting spell, Rank 4 Fireball? or Divine Wrath?
It is clear that a lot of players and probably whole parties would rather see a caster cast a spell that can debuff their enemies on top of doing damage and thus would say Divine Wrath is the better overall spell.
But that doesn't answer the question of whether it is a better blast spell. R6 fireball does 6 more points of damage on average per target though with 380ft more range.
Now there are a lot of mitigating factors that are going to effect which spell will end up doing more damage in real play experience that complicate which spell will be best for any given caster, and some casters, like some sorcerers and animists might very well be capable of having both and choosing which one to use tactically in play, but that is not a product of the divine spell list itself.
Indeed, the question of blasting is complex and multifaceted, which is why it helps to listen to what others have to say, particularly when it’s about sharing facts on the divine list and what it’s capable of. Going from alignment-only damage to sanctified spirit damage is an undeniable buff, for instance, and because there are many divine blasting spells that rely on spirit damage or vitality or void damage, which don’t get resisted all that often, the divine list has the benefit of reliability against anything that’s basically not a construct. The divine list also gets spells like execute that heighten better than famous blast spells like fireball or thunderstrike, so it also does quite well on numbers too at higher levels. That it also can apply potent debuffs while blasting is but one additional perk.
Single target blasting vs AoE blasting is definitively another interesting part of the conversation about blasting and its complexity.
Interestingly, neither spirit blast nor execute actually changed all that much in the remaster and were divine blasting options prior to the remaster. They are both exceptional close range single target blasting spells, but people were never using them before to say the divine list was better at blasting than arcane.
Single target blasting vs AoE blasting is definitively another interesting part of the conversation about blasting and its complexity.
Interestingly, neither spirit blast nor execute actually changed all that much in the remaster and were divine blasting options prior to the remaster. They are both exceptional close range single target blasting spells, but people were never using them before to say the divine list was better at blasting than arcane.
I've never used execute in the remaster. If a multi-target spell does roughly the same damage, I'm taking the multitarget spell. Blasting reaches it's nuttiest numbers on multiple targets. Single target it is ok, but I'm perfectly content to slow single targets with a level 3 slot, drop some cantrip or magic missile damage, then let the martials tear it apart.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Interestingly, neither spirit blast nor execute actually changed all that much in the remaster and were divine blasting options prior to the remaster. They are both exceptional close range single target blasting spells, but people were never using them before to say the divine list was better at blasting than arcane.
This isn't really true: Finger of death, the precursor to execute, only dealt negative damage, and so was useless against undead, which was one more liability on a list of spells that were often useless or severely weaker against a range of different creatures. Divine wrath also used to deal alignment-specific damage, which is why it's only being talked about now, and divine immolation was similarly quite bad at its ability to bypass fire resistance or immunity until the switch to spirit. Even divine lance, once a notoriously and comically weak cantrip, is now a lot better purely by virtue of being more consistent. The remaster gave the divine tradition more reliable damage across the board, whether single-target or AoE, such that instead of being a tradition with unreliable spells and some good options, it's now a tradition with a wide range of good options, especially at higher levels. As also mentioned above, many divine AoE spells have the benefit of only affecting enemies as well, so it's a much safer tradition for avoiding friendly fire.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Interestingly, neither spirit blast nor execute actually changed all that much in the remaster and were divine blasting options prior to the remaster. They are both exceptional close range single target blasting spells, but people were never using them before to say the divine list was better at blasting than arcane.This isn't really true: Finger of death, the precursor to execute, only dealt negative damage, and so was useless against undead, which was one more liability on a list of spells that were often useless or severely weaker against a range of different creatures. Divine wrath also used to deal alignment-specific damage, which is why it's only being talked about now, and divine immolation was similarly quite bad at its ability to bypass fire resistance or immunity until the switch to spirit. Even divine lance, once a notoriously and comically weak cantrip, is now a lot better purely by virtue of being more consistent. The remaster gave the divine tradition more reliable damage across the board, whether single-target or AoE, such that instead of being a tradition with unreliable spells and some good options, it's now a tradition with a wide range of good options, especially at higher levels. As also mentioned above, many divine AoE spells have the benefit of only affecting enemies as well, so it's a much safer tradition for avoiding friendly fire.
This is very true. All the little improvements made divine blasters much, much better and situationally superior.
Interestingly, neither spirit blast nor execute actually changed all that much in the remaster and were divine blasting options prior to the remaster. They are both exceptional close range single target blasting spells, but people were never using them before to say the divine list was better at blasting than arcane.This isn't really true: Finger of death, the precursor to execute, only dealt negative damage, and so was useless against undead, which was one more liability on a list of spells that were often useless or severely weaker against a range of different creatures. Divine wrath also used to deal alignment-specific damage, which is why it's only being talked about now, and divine immolation was similarly quite bad at its ability to bypass fire resistance or immunity until the switch to spirit. Even divine lance, once a notoriously and comically weak cantrip, is now a lot better purely by virtue of being more consistent. The remaster gave the divine tradition more reliable damage across the board, whether single-target or AoE, such that instead of being a tradition with unreliable spells and some good options, it's now a tradition with a wide range of good options, especially at higher levels. As also mentioned above, many divine AoE spells have the benefit of only affecting enemies as well, so it's a much safer tradition for avoiding friendly fire.
Here is a link to the thread for Gortle's Guide to the sorcerer , where they talk about the different strengths of spell lists. About the Divine list, Gortle gives it 3 stars for a sorcerer and says "A good spell list but not as offensive as the others and a much smaller total number of spells. Good for healing and buffing. Reasonable summoning options, some battle forms. Your damage options are no longer weaker than the other lists."
I think it is interesting that Gortle says that the Divine list is not as offensive (-ly focused) as the other lists but that the damage options are no longer worse. I can kind of agree with that if it means that the divine list has spells that do a fair bit of damage, but are harder to use as frequently for regular blasting, largely because it is so 1 save focused and the blasting spells on the list tend to have less range than primal and arcane list blasting spells.I didn't mention Divine Wrath or Divine Immolation in the post that this response is responding to, but I will address them here, later.
I think we all agree that Spirit Blast is largely the same. Spirit damage instead of force damage that only affects creatures with spirits is just much more elegant a way of being able to write it, so in that sense, I guess I do think the spell is better.
Execute now can effect the undead. That is a boost, especially in certain campaigns, but divine casters are not hurting for ways to be absolutely wrecking the Undead with rank 7 spells so its not a change that vastly improves what the spell will be used for in play. For a prepared caster like a cleric or an animist though this is a nice boost that might encourage more people to pick it. More than the single target aspect for me, my high level cleric in the Age of Ashes campaign never picked Fingers of Death because of the short range and the frequency of very large maps. I personally have not seen people leaping to throw this spell around, probably for the reasons Deriven mentions about high level blasting usually being a AoE game, and single target fights usually needing less damage output from casters than action denial. That is me agreeing that the desire to always be blasting is often overrated of a goal, but in addition to up front damage, ease of immediate use in the first round is an important blasting spell consideration, that execute can sometimes struggle with.
I actually did address Divine Wrath a bit earlier in this thread. I think it is an ok spell that has certainly improved with the remastered changes. It is a decent damage options for hitting those sanctification weaknesses (if your character can trigger them) which can really help boost the damage. It doesn't scale very well though and starts out behind Fireball to begin with, so I stand by that it is not a great spell to build a blasting focused caster around. I would not recommend Divine Sorcerers make it a signature spell or for Animists to fill their high rank slots with it in an attempt to play as a blaster, even if I think there are many levels where it will be a fun and useful spell to throw around.
It is nice that Divine Immolation has a more clear cut way of doing damage to creatures resistant and immune to fire than Flame Strike, but the damage is bad for blasting. Persistent damage is worse than direct upfront damage. Persistent damage lets an enemy get one more full round in before it triggers and that is why the vast majority of blasting guides really harp on blasting as being about doing as much damage as possible in the first round of combat. A rank 5 spell only doing 6d6 points of upfront damage is bad for blasting and the spell really doesn't carry any thing else that lets in compete with a spell like fireball, except:
The divine list is so hard up for good reflex targeting options that it can be worth having one or two divine immolation spells on hand for a divine caster for the save it targets and that is what makes the ability to bypass the fire resistance important. An arcane or primal caster who had access to divine immolation would never take it because they have much better options and can easily target reflex with other spells if they think resistance will be a problem.
Divine Lance is still a bad cantrip. It is not as heavy a sandbag as it used to be, but unless you are a cleric or have an easy way to sanctification, no one is choosing Divine lance over Needle Darts. Needle Darts being on every list is the boost that the Divine list got as far as cantrips go.
As far as avoiding friendly fire with AoE, that tends to be pretty costly with the divine list as far as facing reduced damage vs comparably ranked spells, and the Arcane and Divine solution to that problem is the much, much, much better option Chain Lightning, that buries all divine spells for blasting with that 500ft range, and solid d12 damage dice. Going first and blasting with a big AoE spell like Falling stars in the first round, then blasting with chain lightnings on following rounds when combats get muddled is solid arcane/primal blasting that strongly leaves open 3rd actions for spells like force barrage, power word kill, or focus spells that do more damage or increase the damage of the primary spell. Divine casters can do some decent damage when they are facing the right enemies and they don't have to spend a lot of actions moving around, but it is harder to consistently and effectively blast with a list heavily leaning into Fort save damage spells with anemic ranges and few and far between lower damage reflex save options, even if some of those close range, fort save damage spells do hit pretty hard.
The absolutely most important thing to do as a divine caster that wants to be a good blaster is to read your class options carefully to get spells from other lists that will help you do it. Arcane and Primal Blasters do not need to do that.
The absolutely most important thing to do as a divine caster that wants to be a good blaster is to read your class options carefully to get spells from other lists that will help you do it. Arcane and Primal Blasters do not need to do that.
Every divine caster does this except the divine witch. Surprise, surprise, the other low tier PF2 caster that was super powerful from PF1 highly limited in casting.
Witch and wizard, the prepared casters, unable to poach from other lists while nearly every spontaneous caster gets to poach with equal or more spell slots and often better class features.
That's why I don't see the list as mattering for blasting as much if you take the divine list then stack on some great blasting spells to supplement. It still makes you more versatile for key roles like healing and condition removal while still being able to be a good blaster.