The fact that the meleers already are squishier with self-found gear in Elite does not help your case…
I already acknowledged that with BiS meleers are coming out ahead, but the difference between Elite and Ultimate does not help meleers become suddenly better, it’s the gear
Surely it’s not necessarily melee that is OP, but rather it is the use of a shield which is OP?
My IK commando caster wrecks content and he isn’t melee. Why? He uses a shield and took all soldier shield talents.
I mean, 2H and DW builds aren’t much better than casters. In some ways, life is more tough for them.
My 2H Ultos savagery warder is almost twice effective as my AAR battlemage. 18k HP and 2k+ armor and sick healing and slightly higher dps.
My PB selbreaker or DOT DEE WH are like 5 times more effective than my melee battlemage, or any DW pistol build that you can think of and that just doesn’t mean anything.
Exactly. My casters obliterate the content while my melee toons just cope. And that does not mean anything either (if anything, that I suck at melee).
i think what you mean is that in elite the mobs are a joke, which allows fire and forget casters to not care anything for defense. if you aren’t trading gear between even your own characters (all my gear is self found outside trading for TWO legendary helmets) then yes, fighting in close will be more difficult.
but again, this is because elite is basically the same as veteran. even 2H ranged can roflstomp everything on elite it’s ridiculous.
I already said what I meant in the first post, so no point in second guessing that two posts later…
My casters have enough life leech to survive most things, they also have CC and oh-shit skills, so no, it is not all out damage (it was in Veteran, for casters and meleers alike) - and if you think Elite bosses are easy for self-found chars then you have spent too much time with BiS builds in Ultimate
if you aren’t trading gear between even your own characters (all my gear is self found outside trading for TWO legendary helmets) then yes, fighting in close will be more difficult.
I am trading between them, but it is a legit trade, ie not everyone uses the best possible gear I found, also, I do not farm
but again, this is because elite is basically the same as veteran. even 2H ranged can roflstomp everything on elite it’s ridiculous.
I am not saying I am constantly dying with either, but melee is definitely struggling more, I do not see this changing with Ultimate either, until they are in great gear farmed over a long time
My CT Sorc uses two 1-handers and can solo gladiator, my caster builds have BiS gear and get murdered by nearly everything that one might call “end game content” e.g. nemeses, crucible, & clones.
Weapon builds just get a fuckload of extra toys that casters don’t get, and don’t get anything in trade for. If CC worked on bosses to any degree and required a caster offhand, that would go a long way towards closing the ridiculous disparity. If they backed the fuck off of straight-up requiring perfect defenses (and requiring so goddamn many of them) it would also help since it gets tiring to have to figure out how to get as many of the ten resistances up to cap plus phys resist plus armor plus armor absorb on top of scraping for hp/energy regen… I want to focus on what I can do, not how to protect against a million instagib attacks.
This part confuses me a little, are you saying your 1.0.0.7 CT Sorc can solo Gladiator but gets destroyed in Ultimate farming?
Or are you saying only your CT Sorc is any good, and rest of your casters get lit up in Ultimate?
Callidor’s Tempest is still one of the strongest caster builds in 1.0.0.7 for me,
Along with Phantasmal Blades, PRM & Forcewave.
Most of my builds prior to 1.0.0.7 are no longer viable as I built them all with low DA and that style of caster no longer works to well 
You can slow down bosses, yes you can.
Melee players and you have to care about exactly the same resistances.
I can’t share your complain. I got all resistances over 70, including stun, good freeze/slow/petrify resistance, yet I pack almost 3k OA and over 2.1k% bonus to my main dmg type and over 1.8k% to my secondary one. I never ever need to use one single mana pot. shrugs
As some other forumites have mentioned, boost casters to the extent many of you are asking and soon you’ll have all fighters asking for their own boost and here we go again.
AAR battlemage doesn’t sound very effective to start with 
I have multiple casters who can solo end game content.
I never said those ONLY affected CT casters - you’re saying that. I said that they were TARGETING CT casters: “casters (not melee) typically rely on Aldanar’s Vanity, Fateweaver’s Leggings”. Please explain the purpose of those changes if it weren’t to kneecap the CT sorcs that had been facetanking Gladiator.
Again, I never claimed that CT was only such skill in the game. I said CT sorcerors were the most popular for Gladiator because of the weapon component of CT, compared to the lack of weapon component in other sorceror spells. PB is not relevant to sorcerors.
Per the thread I was directly quoting from, CT sorcs had been specifically using those items to facetank Gladiator, and they were nerfed for doing exactly what you and Kaska had suggested: building themselves to be tankier.
That’s to be expected with PB “double dipping” in converting damage to health, both from the weapon damage conversation and from vitality spell conversion.
I like reading your builds and I’m enjoying your current “3 vitality casters” project. I also appreciate just how much healing vitality casters are capable of: I happen to have a couple of hybrid vitality builds myself currently rolling around in Gladiator, one of which I’m hoping to post when I have time in the next few weeks.
That said, there are many other damage types for casters besides vitality, and casters shouldn’t all be forced into the vitality damage type just to have damage conversion to health. After all, melee and ranged builds can access this using any damage type on their weapons, and damage conversion to health is by far the most effective healing method for any build.
tldr: Vitality casters aren’t representative of casters in general.
Ranged builds can hit from ranged too, but they can still ADCTH with their attacks while most casters can’t. Plus, this game brutally and involuntarily forces all builds into some melee combat, especially with bosses. I’d love to see a caster do a Gladiator run without taking any melee damage.
And I never said to remove ADCTH entirely, I said they should require more stacking: “bosses should resist ADCTH far more effectively to force melee builds to make more tradeoffs for additional sustain.” If casters should be required to stack up on Tree, Behemoth, etc, then melee builds should also be making similar tradeoffs by taking Revenant, double Haunted Steel, Lifegiver signet, etc. Instead it’s the opposite: as a melee build’s DPS goes up, his survivability through ADCTH goes up as well and he needs to stack ADCTH even less. Meanwhile, a caster’s DPS likely goes down when he tries increase survivability. That’s one of the additional difficulties for casters that make them less popular and viable at endgame.
I never once said casters weren’t viable because they were too squishy - I said they’re forced to make additional difficult tradeoffs that melee builds easily solve through superior WPS scaling in general, and ADCTH as one specific case. This makes casters far less appealing at endgame.
Ranged weapon builds are in far worse shape than casters though, I agree, but that’s a topic for another thread.
Nobody is asking for automatic “I win” button, or saying that casters are impossible for Gladiator. But melee builds are, collectively speaking, far and away more popular and effective than casters are at current endgame: there’s every flavor and damage type BM/WB/Commando builds for Gladiator on the build forum, while I still haven’t found a single Gladiator caster video posted since 1.0.0.7. And I’m sure that this disparity doesn’t reflect the healthy build diversity that Crate had in mind for this game.
Thanks for the discussion - I’m bowing out of this thread in the interest of time.
No you didn’t. And again casters are not relying on AV of FL, maybe some but not all.
You wrote this
I don’t see sorcerers mentioned, maybe Im blind.
And there are many types of casters beside CT capable of finishing gladiator and guess what, they arent vitality dmg builds.
I could go on like this but:
@kaska
DA, well well i clearly said that and even make joke ‘1 guy gonna come here and talk about stackd movement speed’ etc… and you went even further and saying DA vs movement being range relationship… sorry but this is kinda nonsense sorry…
the facts you wrote 1 by 1 has nothing to do with DA, in ultimate you might be a range caster or pistol guy but mobs comes at you and you will kinda be forced to go melee situation a lot in ultimate
HECK range mobs can crit or land a hit on you so ya DA matters…
not gonna bother talking about other things you mention, CC stuff and such is also king of irrelevancy about DA… sorry
defensive constellations, i clearly said that ‘you can wear bis dps gear and get all defensive constellations’ and goes on… i dont find it wrong or something… i find it just boring and tbh garbage solution for casters,
meanwhile i listed, low armor, low da, no phys res, trash resistance rolls on general caster items and constellations… take a look at red, green, purple constellations and tell me if you see any DA, or phys res on caster related devotions ?
so why game forces people to go battlemage type constellations like TroL, menhir and such… this is boring and not even a solution…
but i also added that maybe its something cool, to go left and right to get diff constellations etc.
so i was not whining about it, i was generating idea and things i find boring/dont like.
ps: tho non of my casters has defensive problemsand non has menhir + trol
3) Mana, you say you play warlocks, arcanist notorious of her insane mana leech+regen and 5 spirit gain, and occultist with 4 spirit gain…
i told this 1 million time, your or my chars are exceptions and wont help about this thread…
some builds has to THINK mana management in their build, heck ‘1 more problem to solve’
ps: i hate the design of AAR, and no i dont have any casters that has mana issues but still pointing the fact
@jov
well ya DW pistols guys/grills are not so different than casters in current meta but still they have access to ADCTH so having 60k fire strike damage with %11 leech is no joke… but still ya they need some help too.i thought like ‘decoy’ type of shit might help them
ability to spawn decoy of yourself which taunts enemies in 8-10 raidus for 3-5 secs with 10-15 sec cooldownrequires pistol to use etc… this might buy them sometime and totally suits the style of pistol playstyle… but dont know just generating ideas…
@chthon
come on dude, you are not caster at all :eek: its 2 hand forcewave build which uses cast speed to scale attack animation… this doesnt make you caster in arpgs… i was expecting stun jacks commando which boost int trauma damage i am sad right now 
tho still good guide*
in general about mobility, i was not talking about crazying blinking actions like in dota… i just thought small 5-7 mt radius highcooldown blink abilitynot require targeting might help casters… that rely on cast speed and maybe require caster offhand so melee cant benefit.
for dw pistols chars, maybe something like d3 demon hunter backtrack acrobatic thing, or superfast sidestep thing, or creating a DECOY…
Lol, i knew you’d say that.
I know i cheated 
But i posted this one cause every Forcewave build here uses some kind of conversion. So i thought i’d add a Physical Forcewave.
As for Jacks, there isn’t any gear support for physical jacks build. I think a physical jacks build can still be made. But not having any dedicated gear is pretty bad.
Also, i’m not a big fan of jacks. I know they shotgun but i still don’t like using them
Great summary of the problem.
NICE SCAM BRO
lol i was really expecting some kind of weird build from you since you write many guides,
max temper, some int trauma + light devotion mixed with ultos set stun jack grenado etc, commando&elementalist… maybe its doable who knows :undecided:
but you totally broke my hearth
No, it’s not relevant. A frozen mob won’t hit. A stunned mob won’t hit. A snared mob won’t reach you in time. Etc etc etc. It’s 100% relevant. Your best defence as a caster is crowd control, in this and in virtually any rpg game. I hardly ever have anything in melee range and when I do, most of the times it’s cos I choose to. Casting mobs are usually easier to kill this way. This applies to my three 85 warlocks. Cold one: no comment. Poison one: debuffing fest. Fire one: stun fest.
As I have said many times, you are not picking up defensive constellations and then complaining about lacking defence. :rolleyes: “oh, it’s boring”. Yeah, getting killed is more fun I guess. :eek:
I did mention I might be just lucky cos warlocks can handle mana really well, that it’s not the first time I hear this complain and I even encouraged you to create a thread about this specific issue. Did you actually read my post?
Sorry mate, there’s more to playing casters than maximizing dps at the expense of everything else. If you choose not having the tools, you can’t complain about not doing so. It’s plain childish. And before you mention, no, I didn’t go all out defensive. Just enough. Close to 3k OA and over 2k% to the main damage type sounds offensive enough to me.
well ill explain last time super politely and this my last explanation try to you,
starting with** dude how many times i am gonna say your warlock, or my casters or jovs vitality casters, chthon weird ass builds are cant be the main actors of this topic… balance in arpg’s is all about composing&seeing big pictures not exceptions***
you insist on talking about conditions where you can CC everything, freeze stun whole world… you are living in dreamland where fabius cant shadow strike you, where flesh hulks doesnt blitz on you or iron maiden kindly walk to you with 10 movement speed or something?
seriously asking, how many times you fully cleared valbury with your warlocks?
how many times you got surrounded by 1 flesh 1 iron 1 rage hulk + aetherial obelisk with 10000 spawns near it + 2-3 crystals???
tldr, you cant CC fabius, heck you are fucking warlock you have zero control on flesh hulks + nemesis and t4 heroes, you cant stun them, you cant freeze them, you cant slow them with cof… i wonder whats your fucking secret JAM to control whole world with your mighty warlocks and others cant do with their garbage casters?
stop drawing world most cindirealla picture, where you will never get hit , control everything and outrun all with movespeedtho this is funniest
i am not complaining about anything, i am pointing out of the facts… if other poor itemization and such continues for casters* i have listed 11 diff shits*, they will force to wear same items and force to go mostly same devotions… heck you can do whatever you want and overcome any issues in arpgs , all that matter is your ‘knowledge + classy playstyle’ at the end.
you clearly dont understand 1 thing, i am talking in general balance NOT WHINING ABOUT CASTERS BEING BAD… its my general thoughts, not my casters situations to inform you : all doing fine bro, 8/9 of them afk farms %99.9 of the content… did i make this crystal clear for you ?
i dont know how informative my this post to you but i am gonna point out
MY CASTERS HAVE NO PROBLEMS
tho no1 gives a single damn fuck about my casters imo… problem is ALL OTHER CASTERs, how they solve their issues and most important thing ima underline
WHATS THE COST OF TANKING UP A CASTER? devotion and skill point wise
WHATS THE COST OF TANKING UP A MELEE? devotion and skill point wise
to make this super clear, many melee chars generally dont even bother with most defensive setup + carry shield and HAVE MORE DPS than most casters, more durable then most casters + they have less defensive devotions then most casters + they dont give a fuck about mana and goes onn…
COST of reaching dps and defensive points also matters when comparing the classes and builds…
this thing goes on…
melee deals more damage than casters in generalpls dont wanna listen your warlock adventures, melee has access to life leech, more dmg : more leech : more sustain.
w/e i am tired and i am super dumb person to do this to myself…
it depends on the caster, and also whether you’re talking Mad Queen, Crucible, etc, or just vanilla campaign. my poison caster is annihilating ultimate but that’s because poison is totally absurd. i’ve tried ice/lightning/bleed/chaos casters etc, and everyone ends up carrying a shield or DW tankish because there is so much charge/stun for mobs- get a few too many you just wink out like a broken christmas light.
ultimate is tough for both casters and melee, but melee can ramp up to very-difficult-to-kill and still dish tons of damage. and i don’t care what gear you’re wearing, ultimate is still ice cold water compared to elite. even when the mob levels are identical (fighting a lvl 75 on elite vs. a lvl 75 on ultimate) the difference is night and day. it feels like their OA is doubled, their health is a lot higher, resistances higher and damage is quite a bit higher.
and if you’re determined to define “self found” as greens and blues, that’s really the interim stage- i don’t have BiS on all my toons, their builds are flexible and i usually have several pieces i can’t quite settle on.
the problem with balance is greatest at the end of the game. the Mad Queen (who on ultimate is about 10,000 times harder than elite), and Crucible are brutal build checks that can be very punishing if your toon isn’t completely kitted out, and again that’s just easier for melee- partly because casters must worry about all the same stats +1 and that’s mana/regen, which melee characters can completely ignore.
so in my experience the most powerful casters are still melee hybrids, which can be very effective (my winter druid is ice-bombing the entire map and going DW reducing freeze resist and it’s amazing), but pure caster builds are just punished too much to enjoy imo.