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.
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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.