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Recently, there has been much hay of the damage-dealing mage being, if not a trap, a choice that the system doesn't favor. But is this true? I'm not a CharOp person (as anyone who has seen any of my characters would agree), but many people here are. So my question is: can you make an effective evocation specialist? One that focuses on dealing damage, and casts few to no debuffs. Would it be able to help fight in boss battles, or would the evoker have to stay to the side and hope some below-level minions come along to fight? Also, would a wizard or a sorcerer be a better damage-dealer?
Sorcerer, especially mid-level, will be the more reliable one. I'd pick draconic or elemental, and make sure to pick up the focus spell dragon breath (for draconic) or elemental blast (for elemental).
I don't think it'd work out too badly in boss battles. Arcane has true strike for spell attacks. Primal's worse on the single-targets - purple worm sting, and then finger of death are their first real ones, and those are late. You could get away with heightened acid arrows, though (blowing a hero point for the reroll if necessary).
In my opinion, the best damage dealer would be an Undead Sorcerer.
Harm is the best single target damaging spell and Divine Wrath the most reliable area of effect spell. I doubt you can dish out as many damage with a Wizard or any other kind of Sorcerer. Harming Font Clerics can also do the job, but being prepared casters, they will be more limited for area of effect spells.
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In my opinion, the best damage dealer would be an Undead Sorcerer.
Harm is the best single target damaging spell and Divine Wrath the most reliable area of effect spell. I doubt you can dish out as many damage with a Wizard or any other kind of Sorcerer. Harming Font Clerics can also do the job, but being prepared casters, they will be more limited for area of effect spells.
Harm isn't that great for single target damage unless you melee nova it, and that uses up a lot of your spell casting power in one go. You don't get the +8 bonus for two actions except when restoring HP to undead. Although if you have evidence otherwise I'm interested in hearing it.
Personally I like storm druid's focus spells for blasting, and the primal list isn't a slouch at it either.
Not a sorcerer or wizard, but...
Harm isn't that great for single target damage unless you melee nova it, and that uses up a lot of your spell casting power in one go. You don't get the +8 bonus for two actions except when restoring HP to undead. Although if you have evidence otherwise I'm interested in hearing it.In my opinion, the best damage dealer would be an Undead Sorcerer.
Harm is the best single target damaging spell and Divine Wrath the most reliable area of effect spell. I doubt you can dish out as many damage with a Wizard or any other kind of Sorcerer. Harming Font Clerics can also do the job, but being prepared casters, they will be more limited for area of effect spells.
I'm of course speaking of melee nova. Considering that it deals more than twice the damage of a same level True Strike + Disintegrate, you don't have to use your highest spell slots to deal a massive amount of damage. And Sorcerers have quite a bit of them anyway. Also, no monster has resistance against Harm/Heal nova but Constructs.
If you add Searing Light for range single target damage (it works only against undeads and fiends, but the damage is once again enormous).And Divine Wrath for AoE damage against evil creatures (Divine Wrath doesn't affect you allies unless they are of opposite alignment, so you can spam it in the middle of the party).
The other traditions have nice blast spells, but no impressive ones like the Divine tradition. It's the choice between having lots of meh spells or a few wonderful but conditional ones.
Casters can do a great job of whittling enemies away, even boss enemies, by hitting them with spells that do damage on a save or do auto damage, like magic missile. However, they need to build evasion and staying at range into their build, because they do less immediate damage than melee martials, unless they leave themselves open to horrific retaliation. The undead sorcerer who doesn’t drop the boss on their harm nova is probably dropping on the next round, for example.
And that is the problem. If you have one evoker in the party who wants to skirmish and whittle the enemy down, and a two handed weapon slow moving fighter or barbarian, one of the two characters is going to look useless. Most often it will the skirmisher, because the fighter will yell at you when they get overwhelmed by a superior foe that they couldn’t maintain mobility against, but laugh at your pathetic half damage electric arcs when they are able stand toe to toe with the foe. Your style of play becomes incompatible with one of the most common play styles and your party will blame the build for not being good at doing things the way they want to do them.
I'm of course speaking of melee nova. Considering that it deals more than twice the damage of a same level True Strike + Disintegrate, you don't have to use your highest spell slots to deal a massive amount of damage. And Sorcerers have quite a bit of them anyway. Also, no monster has resistance against Harm/Heal nova but Constructs.Harm isn't that great for single target damage unless you melee nova it, and that uses up a lot of your spell casting power in one go. You don't get the +8 bonus for two actions except when restoring HP to undead. Although if you have evidence otherwise I'm interested in hearing it.In my opinion, the best damage dealer would be an Undead Sorcerer.
Harm is the best single target damaging spell and Divine Wrath the most reliable area of effect spell. I doubt you can dish out as many damage with a Wizard or any other kind of Sorcerer. Harming Font Clerics can also do the job, but being prepared casters, they will be more limited for area of effect spells.
I suppose I've only played 2E at low level yet (nothing above level 3), so such a nova seems like using up your entire adventuring day in one turn.
I've been having a lot of fun with my divine sorcerer.
Her ability to stay in the fight with numerous sources of temporary hit points and to lay on the beat down with a nova of beefed up harm spells or drain life spells is pretty stellar. To say nothing of her ability to heal, buff, debuff, control the battlefield, or remove conditions.
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This is all theorycraft on my end, but here are my thoughts and reasoning; hopefully it's a good post to build discussion off of. As a reminder, this is answering the OPs question of how to go about making such a build; I'm not comparing it to other types of casters here.
First off, I think there's one more option you should consider: Storm Druid. You get access to the Primal list and have a damage dealing focus power, the first being on par with the Arcane list, and the second rather important if you want to be a blaster first and foremost: I'll get to that later.
Anyway, I think your main options to consider for this specific goal are Evoker Wizard, Draconic or Elemental Sorceror, or Storm Druid. I'd actually pick which one based on your character's secondary focus. What else do you want to be good at? If you want to know everything, or serve as a face, or be wise and maybe provide some healing to the group when you are done blasting everything, that's a fine reason to pick a path.
Additionally, if you have strong opinions on the Primal vs Arcane lists, that may also narrow down your choices.
Now: the difficulties I see in being an Evocation specialist: Compared to PF1, the evoker loses spell slots and (more importantly) automatic level scaling to spells. In return, they gain scaling cantrips and the same DC for all spells, regardless of level.
Based on the losses, a PF2 Evocation Specialist seems to have a lot less staying power in terms of slinging spells around than their PF1 counterpart. Cantrips mean the floor is higher, so you'll never run out of level appropriate evocations, but that's not where you want to be. So: how can we get staying power?
1) Focus Spells
2) Magic Items
3) Multiclassing
4) Cantrip Selection
Focus spells: You will want to have a focus spell that's a stronger evocation than your cantrips, and ways to get and recover additional focus points. For an Evoker Wizard, the lowly Force Bolt may not look like much, but it's a one-action Magic Missle you get back after 10 minutes. Cast your main spell and find out you just needed a little more oomph to get the job done? Force bolt. The Elemental Sorceror's focus spell is sorta in the same place, being a one action spell that does level*d8 damage on a hit. Tempest Surge is two actions, but does better damage and has a nice debuff on a failed save. (I know we aren't debuff mages, but if it comes from a lightning bolt, I'm inclined to take it). Dragon Sorcs need to wait until 6th level to get their Focus evocation, but if you want dragon breath on command, the wait is likely worth it.
Both Druids and Sorcerors get feats at 12th and 18th level to Refocus up to 2 and 3 points, respectively. I'm not sure why Wizards were left out in the cold on this one, and I'd be a little surprised if they didn't get matching feats in a future release. Additional focus point renewal can come from magic items (ie Druid's Vestments), familiar powers, and Gnome ancestry feats.
Magic Items: Besides items that can recover Focus, get yourself a staff. Fire and Evocation are both solid options for you. While I have yet to try one in game, the wands with rider effects look interesting. A wand of manifold missles to start the encounter? A wand of smoldering fireballs if burning is more your style? If you want to be an Evocation Specialist, you'll want to invest some GP in it.
Multiclassing: If you think you can spare some feats from your main class, multiclassing into a second caster is not a bad way to get some more spell power. The extra cantrips are great (more on that later), and you can grow your focus pool with a wider variety of focus powers to pick up. Two schools of thought: Multiclassing into the same magic tradition lets you use the proficiency from your main class, while multiclassing into a new tradition starts you back at Trained but gives you more variety. Playing an Elemental Sorc but feel like you wish you had True Strike and/or Magic Missle? Multiclassing into Bard for those might not be a bad choice.
Finally: Cantrips. Most people will say "yeah, just take Electric Arc, it's the best one. Maybe Ray of Frost too, for range." My take: If you want to be an Evocation Specialist, you want to prepare *them all*. If you are down to cantrips, but you can take advantage of a monster's weakness, then you are still golden. Of course, you probably want some of the non-damage dealing cantrips, too. Those are the ones to get from magic items / multiclassing / skill feats / ancestry heritages and feats. You won't care about the DC for those, so it won't matter if they are innate and/or only trained proficiency.
Pure evocation I would probably say Sorcerer. Decent focus spells for blasting and spontaneous casting make it easy to have your damage and some utility on the side.
I think a Storm Druid is more well-rounded, though, because their focus powers are so useful. Tempest Surge is really good alongside their utility from other orders. Goodberry (with the errata) is a nice bit of extra healing, you can always find a use for Pest Form, and Druids overall have interesting class feats
Wizard works too, but then their focus spells aren't as great and they don't have the choice of spell list like Sorcerer, nor do they have the blaster advantage of spontaneous casting. Arcane Bond is nice though and they have more options outside of pure blasting if you decide to deviate a bit later on. Pure evocation, though, I'd say Sorcerer edges them out
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I haven't looked into sorcerers much yet, but has it been worked out yet if the damage bonus from Diabolic Blood Magic stacks with that of Dangerous Sorcery?
If so, adding Stat bonus + (Spell level x2)to spell damage seems pretty solid.
Diabolic Blood Magic doesn't work much anyway. You can't use it on most spells given from your Bloodline. The only ones you can affect are Crushing Despair, Divine Decree and Meteor Swarm. Not an incredible choice...
Another benefit to playing a Sorcerer: You've got the Charisma to back up Demoralize. One action demoralize to hopefully lower the enemy's saves by 1 or 2, two action spell against the softer target. If you are a Draconic Sorc, this is entirely on-brand. If you're Elemental, the image I like is more of a dispiriting taunt / making the enemy cower in front of the power at your command, but that's just flavor.
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Diabolic Blood Magic doesn't work much anyway. You can't use it on most spells given from your Bloodline. The only ones you can affect are Crushing Despair, Divine Decree and Meteor Swarm. Not an incredible choice...I haven't looked into sorcerers much yet, but has it been worked out yet if the damage bonus from Diabolic Blood Magic stacks with that of Dangerous Sorcery?
If so, adding Stat bonus + (Spell level x2)to spell damage seems pretty solid.
Oh yeah. Hmmm, that's a real bummer.
Another benefit to playing a Sorcerer: You've got the Charisma to back up Demoralize. One action demoralize to hopefully lower the enemy's saves by 1 or 2, two action spell against the softer target. If you are a Draconic Sorc, this is entirely on-brand. If you're Elemental, the image I like is more of a dispiriting taunt / making the enemy cower in front of the power at your command, but that's just flavor.
While doing some research for this thread I started thinking about a Hobgoblin build going heavy on intimidate and using Agonizing Rebuke for some pick up damage. Maybe scale into Scare to Death for some extra fun.
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I've done a little math, and acid arrow is actually quite a good single target spell as long as there aren't any convenient running water features around for the enemy to clear off the persistent damage with. Persistent damage will most likely stick around until the enemy rolls a 15+ to clear it. That's a 70% chance it will stick around every turn. That means it procs on average 2.267 times before being cleared.
That gives acid arrow a base average damage of 3d8 + 1d6*2.267, 21.43, if it hits normally and 35 if it crits. With True Strike, you're actually 5% more likely to hit a target than a fighter most levels.
So just so you know, Scare to Death is *not* Demoralize, and doesn't benefit from things that trigger on the Demoralize action (such as Agonizing Rebuke or Initmidating Glare for that matter). Beyond this, it's an incapacitation effect, which means it's a lot less good against the big-bad. Honestly, I used to think Scare to Death was one of the best high-level feats, it seems fairly mediocre to me at this point.
If used against a higher level foe, Scare to Death becomes equivalent to a regular Demoralize attempt. If that's what you were going to do anyway, you don't lose anything.
As an aside, I didn't realize that Intimidate was also a Bloodline Skill for Elemental Sorcerers, so they get the initial investment for free, too.
One last Intimidate tangent; any more and it should probably go into its own thread: Intimidation might even be a viable option for Wizards, Druids, and others that have dumped Charisma and see no reason to put ability bumps into it. Just pick up Assurance(Intimidation) and put some skill increases into it, capping out at Scare to Death if you're willing to take it up to Legendary. A side benefit of using Assurance is that you ignore the -4 penalty for not using a common language. What value! Note: I have not run the numbers exhaustively; you'll probably need to be at least an Expert for this to work against same-level foes at lower levels. But hey, as an Evoker I expect you'll mostly be targeting AC and Reflex saves; having a one-action thing that targets Will prior to your two action spell is likely better that just casting Shield, assuming the rest of the party is doing a good job of putting themselves between you and your enemies. :)
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Fun trick (that will almost never see play) for wizards focused on damage spells: Spell Combination (8th level disintegrate x 2) gives a 32d10 single-target blast. It requires 20th level and a 10th level spell though.
I've done a little math, and acid arrow is actually quite a good single target spell as long as there aren't any convenient running water features around for the enemy to clear off the persistent damage with. Persistent damage will most likely stick around until the enemy rolls a 15+ to clear it. That's a 70% chance it will stick around every turn. That means it procs on average 2.267 times before being cleared.
That gives acid arrow a base average damage of 3d8 + 1d6*2.267, 21.43, if it hits normally and 35 if it crits. With True Strike, you're actually 5% more likely to hit a target than a fighter most levels.
Sorry, I really messed up my math; persistent damage does a lot more. With a maximum of 10 rounds, persistent damage does damage * (1 + 0.7 + 0.7^2 + 0.7^3 + 0.7^4 + 0.7^5 + 0.7^6 + 0.7^7 + 0.7^8 + 0.7^9). That's on average 3.24 rounds if a combat lasts 10 rounds. I forgot the damage takes effect before you roll to clear it.
That makes the initial average damage at level 2 24.84 on a hit.
Each heightening of 2 levels does an additional 2d8 + 1d6*3.24. That's 20.34 average damage on a hit. Of note, the persistent damage does more than the 2d8.
Against a boss where it's very unlikely they can be crit except on 20's and unlikely that they can take the 2 actions off to try to clear the persistent damage, this is a very strong spell.
Both Druids and Sorcerers get feats at 12th and 18th level to Refocus up to 2 and 3 points, respectively. I'm not sure why Wizards were left out in the cold on this one, and I'd be a little surprised if they didn't get matching feats in a future release.
Correcting an error of mine: I missed that Wizards get Bonded Focus. I'm not sure why it's a 14th level feat vs the level 12 feats that others get, or why they can't go up to refocusing 3 (maybe because they can't get their focus pool up to 3 without multiclassing?). In any case, it's there. And looking on the bright side, it being a Wizard 14 feat means it doesn't conflict with X Expert Spellcasting, if you decide to go the Multiclass route.
After looking at how strong persistent damage is, I noticed how effective Savor the Sting, the Pain Domain focus 1 spell is.
It's a 1 action cast. It does an average of 10.6 damage per spell level over 10 rounds on a failed will save. The persistent damage actually doubles on a crit fail. If the enemy has a weak will save, I think this is actually the most effective damage spell in the game.
After looking at how strong persistent damage is, I noticed how effective Savor the Sting, the Pain Domain focus 1 spell is.
It's a 1 action cast. It does an average of 10.6 damage per spell level over 10 rounds on a failed will save. The persistent damage actually doubles on a crit fail. If the enemy has a weak will save, I think this is actually the most effective damage spell in the game.
No, it's Wall of Fire :P
Considering 10 rounds of persistent damage is clearly too much. 2 rounds is already very high.
After looking at how strong persistent damage is, I noticed how effective Savor the Sting, the Pain Domain focus 1 spell is.
It's a 1 action cast. It does an average of 10.6 damage per spell level over 10 rounds on a failed will save. The persistent damage actually doubles on a crit fail. If the enemy has a weak will save, I think this is actually the most effective damage spell in the game.
No, it's Wall of Fire :P
Considering 10 rounds of persistent damage is clearly too much. 2 rounds is already very high.
The average persistent damage duration is 3.24 rounds if you have the full 10 rounds possible available to you before the fight ends. If there were only 9 rounds available, you would only have an average duration of 3.2 rounds. It's just a consideration for the formula since it's possible to last that long.
My experience with boss, level+3/4, fights are that they frequently last that long due to the amount the party misses. In these fights, I think persistent damage is one of the best things you can be doing. Acid Arrow or a high level Acid Flask should be used in every boss fight where the boss isn't resistant.
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I'm not so great at math so I just wrote a snippet of Python code to find it empirically;
import randomtrials = 1000000
durations = []
for i in range(trials):
rounds = 0
while rounds < 10: # end persistent damage after 10 rounds
rounds += 1 # do damage
if random.randint(1, 20) >= 15: # roll a DC 15 flat check
break # end persistent damage on a success
durations.append(rounds)print(sum(durations)/trials) # report average
This results in a 3.24 rounds average duration of persistent damage.
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The average persistent damage duration is 3.24 rounds if you have the full 10 rounds possible available to you before the fight ends. If there were only 9 rounds available, you would only have an average duration of 3.2 rounds. It's just a consideration for the formula since it's possible to last that long.... Can you show your math here. The way I'm figuring, it has a 0.49 chance to still be chugging along after round 2 (0.7^2). Chances obviously decrease exponentially, so that helps the "average" duration, but the *typical* duration seems to be far less.
EDIT: Just saw... you did show your math. I'm expressing median and you're expressing mean. Honestly, I like the median for what *typically* happens, but got it now :).
You got it. The median is 2 here, but it's close. Persistent procs 1 or 2 times in total 1.7/3.2 percent of the time. That is over half the time.
Personally, I don't think variance is bad here. If the acid was guaranteed to last 10 turns, you couldn't tune to math to do this much damage. I really like the design here, and it adds another situational tool to the spellcaster's arsenal to optimize.
@Queaux: I don't even mind a median duration of 2 rounds. That's still fairly solid. I'd agree, the design seems pretty good. Against anything that dies quickly with focus fire, this is going to be bad, but against a big-bad, you're right, it's probably pretty solid. Still, I'd look at Shocking Grasp if you see anything in metal armor :-P.
You're right about Shocking Grasp versus those in Metal Armor. I think that definitely goes on the spell list with the good base damage and some persistent damage progression.
Wand of Smoldering Fireballs gives another stacking persistent damage effect we can take advantage of with good base damage and persistent damage progression.
Along with the persistent damage effects, we can use flaming sphere for good round after round damage that let's us use our spare action.
I think it's becoming clear to me that spellcasters do have good single target damage, it's just over time instead of front loaded.
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I think a lot of the power of a blaster is going to come out of flexibility and opportunism. A lot of mooks blocking the fighter's path to the boss? Time for AoEs to wipe the floor. A mook in the corner that just barely survived another character's full round assault, and is about to get a turn and return fire? Finish it off remotely with a cantrip.
It's hard to put that sort of thing into numbers, but I think to get a good result out of a caster you need to build for that sort of opportunism.
I think Primal Sorcerer with a multi-class for true strike is the way to build it. You can also get access to the highest level wand of manifold missiles with an arcane or Magaambya archetype, which is a significant damage option against especially hard to hit targets.