Seriously I was just looking over a high level kineticists build I have and did the maths for how accurate it is... Not very.
Starting with 18 Dex+2 from levels+6belt+4elemental overflow= 30 Dex
15 Bab +6 elemental overflow +10 from Dex. That's a 31 to hit with your one big hit
Compared to say a inquisitor doing archery with the same starting stat same belt and a +5 bow with heroism pre cast.
Turn 1 cast Divine power and judgement
Turn 2 greater Bane and fire
15BAB + 5 judgement + 5 enhancement + 8 Dex + 6 divine power + 2 Bane -2 rapid shot
Granted it's a turn on buffing but after than turn you're looking at
39/39/39/39/34/29
That could even be higher with greater heroism and and bracers of Archery and faits favoured you have another +5 at which point your least accurate shot is more accurate that the kineticist.
Granted the kineticists can target touch but their damage is negligable doing so at this level.
I know people prefer to go debuffing with a high level kineticists (I like the idea of a chilling blizzard cloud myself) but even so they seem super low on the accuracy scale for a class that focuses on one big blast if they wanna hurt you.
Am I missing something? Or do y'all just right off shooting things with a kineticists at high levels?
EDIT: on my phone sorry for typos
By the time you're a high level kineticist, if you come across things that you can't really hit the AC on, by then you probably have some AoE infusions that will deal automatic damage to whatever you choose to drop a wall on.
But still, 31 to hit lets you hit an adult red dragon 95% of the time.
The class could use an additional accuracy booster in item form eventually, but that's more because "otherwise you spend all your money on belts and armor" than anything else.
They could do with anything to spend their money on honestly
Fragmentation does seem decent for an AOE but I don't know if there is a way to make it selective.
No headband
No weapon
They just need a ring, amulet belt and armour and their set and the armour probably ends up being bracers anyway.
Actually I think the problem is less severe at early level I have played a kineticist at level 6 before and had a +12 to hit with a touch attack no less for 3D6+8 or gathered and empowered at 4D+12. Pretty much auto hit everything the problem becomes when accuracy drops off and the damage from energy blasts becomes negligably small.
All those little bonus are one way round it, but it's a bit of work to find em. I imagine there is a list of them somewhere.
Other classes start to pull ahead as wealth by level does. Elemental overflow can compete with bab/class features to compensate for 3/4 bab. It can't compensate for enhancement bonuses on weapons as well.
Plus some classes have more the one scaling accuracy boost an inquisitor for instance has judgements and divine power/favour scaling up accuracy and basically a static boost when Bane and Heroism become available respectively. Meanwhile kineticists get elemental overflow and nothing else.
Even full bab classes have accuracy bonuses (weapon training/rage/studied target) and an enhancement bonus on top.
So I suppose once these features start coming online is when they begin to drop off and unfortunately the issue is confounded by enhancement bonuses scaling up at the same time.
Inquisitor is one of the most damage potential classes. I bet if you compared to a bard or cleric you'd see it looking like it's the better class.
Plus at lv20 you should be factoring in Inherent bonuses from manuals, so that's a +5 there and you only placed 2 of your 5 level ups into dex, so even if you pulled just one, that plus the manual is giving you 3 more accuracy.
Two words....
Touch AC. And each hit comes with tons of d6's for damage.
physical blasters will often want deadly aim, though not taking the rapid shot penalty.
Bards have more utility and party wide buffs cleric even more so I picked an inquisitor because it's more of a combatant and kineticists bare a closer ratio of combat to utility to inquisitor than a bard.
I put the +2 in Dex for a +3 in con you could put the +3 in Dex but then you could also do so with the inquisitor. I didn't factor in manuals because both classes had the same access so didn't bother and I don't assume every character has access to them the same way one does an enhanced weapon or a belt. It is true though that would rocket it up to the giddy heights of 34 but as I say inquis can do the exact same and actually id be more likely to put 3 in Dex for an inquisitor than I would for the kineticist but that's just me.
Touch AC attacks are amazing but the damage they do is horribly low at high levels (assuming 32 con) it's 10D6+19 (with pbs) you can gather power, empower it, maximise it and and quicken/cast two of the same for 4 burn whichever works out cheaper you're still not doing that much and you've taken heavy burn.
Bit of quick mental maths says 118 per blast (and that's assuming that you maximise the empowered damage dice if not its more like 100)
And you've paid somewhere around 80-100 in none lethal damage for the privilege
I didn't account for Deadly aim because with greater bane+judgement+divine power+ 5 enhancement bonus + weapon damage + 20 STR (starting 14+belt) the average damage per shot is something like 42, deadly aim does 8 per shot for an inquisitor at this level which means if even one shot misses due to the accuracy drop then it's a DPS drop not an increase.
The same isn't true for fighters I don't think however I haven't done the math on them.
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*also the dex bonus should be +6 size from overflow, not +4. Accuracy is basically always worth more than damage.
Yes the kineticist loses the DPR race with an archer inquisitor. I've shown that the archer inquisitor is like #2 on possible DPR with archery, with #1 being WP. So if you want to stick to comparing to those classes you can stop now because yes, the kineticist will lose to them.
But on it's own merits here's a level 20 kineticist.
you have -6 burn for infusions and -1 burn for composite blasts and -1 burn for 1 metamagic and gather power for -2 burn.
a composite blast is normally 2 burn so using it is 1 burn
empower is now free
leaving you 7 burn worth of infusions to add to the blast after gathering power.
the damage is 20d6+20+con+12(overflow) lets say your con mod is +8, that puts you're damage around 110*1.5 or 165 DPH with deadly aim that goes to 177 DPH that has a host of rider effects or done in an AoE.
A kineticist can accept 6 burn in a round, so going nova with that is
double blast composite empowered for 5
quickened empowered blast for 3
reduce by 2 for gather energy.
Which is looking at 330+10d6+10+con+12 ~ 430 damage in 1 round.
if we nova and have a full buffer we can use 9 burn to pull off
double blast composite empowered maximized for 7
quickened empowered composite blast for 4
reduced by 2 for gather energy.
now we're at ~ 530 Damage.
Energy blast fire is looking at losing 27 damage per hit to go against touch AC.
And this probably isn't the true upper limits of the class. Just a high end build.
I prefer the +6 to con for the DC and the HP more than the damage.
More importantly, does the infusion specialisation apply to metakinesis? I always assumed it didn't, that would alleviate the issues I have with the class somewhat.
no, infusions specialization is only for infusions.
And it's fine to prioritize con over dex if you want. It just makes the comparison less fair.
Here's an inquisitor that priorities DEX for the best to hit he can vs. a kineticist that gives up at least 2 accuracy by not prioritizing dex.
True enough, I understand the virtues of standardised priorities, the comparison was initially based off a kineticist I made (which ends with 30/32 Dex/con) and an inquisitor I also made. Hence the muddied comparison. Even so the boost puts them at 33 vs 39 (which could easily be raised to 44) which is a pretty vast gulf.
I didn't think the specialisation factored for metakinesis, and given it doesn't I would say that you can choose to target touch AC and do mediocre damage or take a shed load of burn and do good accurate damage. Or one could choose physical and do reasonable damage to massive overkill damage (I dare say more than the inquisitor) in exchange for a ludicrous amount of burn (in the case of the latter). Which is fair enough however the chance of such a massive hit point investment just missing being around 1/4 to 1/3 with the higher AC on CR encounters is a bit daunting.
Starting with 18 Dex+4 from levels+6belt+6elemental overflow= 34 Dex
15 Bab +6 elemental overflow +12 from Dex, +1 weapon focus, +1 5000gp ioun stone, That's a 35 to hit with your one big hit AC for a CR 20 is 36.
The physical blast is hitting on a two, plus there's heroism for +2 that can be gained by wondrous item. And then there are probably a few more items to get another +2 or +3. Now deadly aim is hitting on a 2 and you're hitting higher AC opponents on a 2.
And the kineticist using it's blast is unlike other classes that want to overshoot AC as much as possible for later attacks to land, the kineticist just needs the full bab hit to beat AC on a 2.
27 DPR for going fire and getting touch isn't bad, 138 DPR basically guaranteed.
and again, yes, The kineticist ISN'T the big damage class, and it will be vastly outshone by the inquisitor. BUT THE ARCHER INQUISITOR OUTSHINES THE FIGHTER AND THE PALADIN AND BASICALLY EVERY OTHER CLASS OUT THERE. It's kinda like complaining that the barb is bad at skills vs the investigator or bard. Yeah, the barb can't compete to that, but he can solidly beat out many classes and is on par for most classes.
The kineticist is a class that is hard to mess up, but doesn't have much room to grow when you work at it.
Those alterations you have made to the build do increase the accuracy although literally all of them can be done for an inquisitor or any other class one might compare the kineticist to. Dedicating 4 points from level rather than 2 and buying an Ion stone (which one?) is not a quality unique to the kineticist and doesn't actually narrow the gap between it and more accurate classes (classes with full bab and an accuracy booster or classes with multiple accuracy boosters built in) Heroism+bane+judgement+divine power/favour) not to mention the simple lack of an enhancement bonus to a weapon, which in my opinion would make things a lot simpler.
Although true this does achieve pretty great accuracy (I wouldn't do the +4 to Dex at the expense of con though personally)
I think the best damage they can grab without burn is taking the -1 burn on meta for maximise, gather power with a maximised composite blast for 120+20+Con+12+DA for in your build 168 ish if I'm correct.
No need for CAPs abuse I haven't contested that the inquisitor is a strong class to pick as comparison. I picked it because it's a good example of what a powerful ranged class can achieve, I do think the same argument could be made with a fighter or a warp resist and maybe a ranger and the gap would still be there (this is an educated guess however I'm not as familiar with those classes as the inquisitor, another reason I chose the inquisitor). Not quite so vast a gap but a gap still. Although you'll note I actually think the kineticist has a higher DPS ceiling than the inquis when novaing.
And of course as you say they only have to hit once, but then they equally only have one chance to hit.
For this purposes of this thread however I'd say the issue is resolved they aren't as accurate as other classes but they can be accurate enough with a bit of work. And a novel ion stone which id like the name of if at all possible.
Cracked Pale Green Prism +1 competence bonus on attack rolls or saving throws, 4,000gp. Wow, I was remembering the price of the AC ioun stone.
And yeah, the kineticist is lower accuracy because it doesn't need to overshoot AC like the others want to. A kineticist being 2 under their AC or 10 over their AC still hits on a 2, while the others have extra attacks needed to get their DPR up and being 2 under is a lot worse than being 10 over.
In my archer comparison here was the DPR breakdown for my lv11 builds.
Fighter: 115.23
Chaplain War Priest:
R1: 130.12
R2: 161.97
R3: 175.62
R4: 177.54
Inquisitor:
R1: 85.53
R2: 106.65
or
R1 then R2: 170.60
Zen Archer Monk: 100.11
Sohei Monk: 127.58
Medium thing: 106.75 or 112.33
Tempered Champion Paladin: 117.88
Barbarian: 89.54
Ranger: 103.88
Luring Cavalier: 123.37
Occultist: 79.43/R2: 122.01 or 72.63/R2: 114.39
The inquisitor with 1 round of buffs is in second place overall at 55DPR over the fighter. 70DPR over the zen archer. 65DPR over the ranger. And this was before the Inquisitor gets greater bane for a massive spike. So assuming trends hold fairly steady, Inquisitor was probably the worst class you could have picked to compare against.
Against 17 or more antagonists, the level 17 telekineticist cleans up in the DPR competition versus the archer though ;p
Cool pale green prisms I'll make a note I'm not very up on ion stones beyond the dusty rose and I believe there is an orange one that boosts CL.
I thought it was a LV 10 comparison? Also out of interest where do you think the gunslinger might fall?
Furthermore I don't agree with you that picking the strongest class for comparison makes it the worst comparison. Rather I think picking the worst would make the worst comparison. One could say, look how the kineticist beats out a barbarian down range without taking burn (although I don't think it does at that level? Not sure) to which I'd reply so what? I don't think anyone has ever thought, if I can just compete with a barbarian doing archery I'll be happy.
Perhaps an inquisitor is a tall stick to measure against but I wouldn't say a bad one. It's better to see how far it falls short of the best there is and decide whether that is a justifiable short fall than to see that it out shoots something that falls unacceptably short. (Not that I feel 89 is an unacceptable short fall)
Against 17 or more antagonists, the level 17 telekineticist cleans up in the DPR competition versus the archer though ;p
I think any kineticist with fragmentation would out DPR an archer against 17 opponents. As would a wizard completely not blasting optimised casting of chain lightning even if they make the save it's something like 510, divided into negligible amounts naturally but still XD.
Why what's the kineticists special trick?
I think it's best to compare against the classes known for DRP, fighter, ranger, paladin. Because when you see that it's around their level or better you don't wonder, "is this class bad?" like you did when you compared it to the best. The majority of builds were pulling in between 100 and 120 DPR. That the Inquisitor and WP were such big outliers should show that they aren't were you should be. But seeing if you fall in the realm that majority of DPR builds were in.
Many throw, though it comes on really, really late is hilarious when you get to use it. 18th level telekineticist hitting 18 people for 1.5* (9d6+36) (or whatever) each with an empowered many throw, and you don't even need to gather power to do it for 0 burn.