Sorcerer vs BW

[Madcatmech]

Well good for RoR then that the dedicated sorc players on this server are better than the dedicated bw players.

Its the same with kobs/chosen; Few Kobs playing but most are better than the plethora of Chosen destro has.

[Aurandilaz]

I've got a rr69 Sorc and rr48 BW, played both classes in ST and AoE specs as well. The legend of BW being worse than Sorc in ST is just not true. If an outsider who doesn't play the classes and looks at the ST tree choices, they say "oh no, no Swell of Gloom, this surely means BW lacks the burst that a sorc has!".
However, a BW and Sorc have about the same ST rotation, yes Sorc gets their extra pumped Gloomburst, but BW can get their so glorious Flashfire (which triggers about all the time unless you just facing low disrupt mdps hordes with no tank Hold the Lines). However to get their ST even better, BW gets Burn Through, which might require abandoning some other tactic, having a 3 sec massive Firebal become instacast which also becomes undefendable, it's most likely one of the most lethal rdps abilities out there currently.
And in case you want to deviate from the more commonly used ST specs, BW can go get ranged Knockdown (sorc cannot) and BW can go get ranged healdebuff (Sorc cannot). Funnel Power is also very glorious, not just because of the extra damage on every hit, but because it vastly improves your chance to proc further extra damage.
This doesn't mean that Sorc ST is somehow bad, but a well played BW who has the correct tactics for the situation, a proper use of Flashfire and knowing how to trigger it often enough so you get those nasty 3k Fireballs on instacast which really hurt.


As for AoE comparison between the classes, BW is miles ahead. It's just not even funny at this point. Now I play mainly my Sorc, it has best gear and one could argue I'm almost a decent Sorc bomber. I try to collect damage per second statistics, usual Sorc bombing DPS is around 2.5k to 3k, with the occasional well times peak at 3.5 and very rare maximum of 4k damage per second when bombing.
For BW, I thought "surely my rr48 BW cannot do same AoE dps as my +60 max gear sorc???"... I was so wrong. BW DPS (my personal DPS statistics and trying to review records of battle on videos that I have stored) starts about same 2.5k for warming up DPS, very often just hovers between 3.5k and 4k and peaks above 5k. When I first reached +5k damage per second I thought it simply wasn't real, but yeah, it can be explained why a BW damage per second can peak so much higher than Sorc DPS.
BW has Flashfire. That means in every big fight a competent BW will throw out a Fiery Blast every 3 second enjoying an almost unlimited disrupt every time as long as tanks are around Holding the Line, do a Flamebreath or Scorched Earth between with the occasional Detonate/Annihilate, and then just pump out another massive instacast Fiery Blast.
The BW superiority doesn't just stop there, as they have a tactic called Wildfire. Despite just 25% proc chance, considering how much AoE you pumping out, it drops a damn lot, and it does crit and it crits like hell due to BW career mechanic. Usual 200-400 crits, occasional 500-700 crits on low resist targets and somehow according to my combat log my all time highest Wildfire crit of 1025 which must have been on a nude lowbie or something to explain such value. And it's a 5 second over time DoT, which for some reason hits twice.
What however really crowns BW as the better warband bomber is their Morale 2, Ruin and Destruction. Sorc does not have a damage dealing M2, who knows why. If the BWs happen to use the moral pumping tactic, they can unleash the M2 moral bomb in about 8-10 seconds, though most of time it might be preferable to wait without moral pump and reach M2 about same time as tanks who get their M2 Raze, so they can both unleash massive damage together at around 20-30 seconds. Sorc's run with Focused Mind because... well that's what you have and the other choices are even less proper. Sorc gets proper damage moral from M4, which happens after 160-200 seconds, by which time BW has done M2 twice already if not thrice.


Despite the AoE being somewhat on BW side in pure damage numbers, it doesn't look too bad. Sorc used to have awesome group synergy with Choppa who would provide Chop Fasta, allowing Sorc to do proper damage ranged bombing with Infernal Wave. This was nerfed last week and no longer works. A well played Sorc can still be a proper match for a well played BW, assuming the Sorcs know what they are doing and keep their distance from the BW bombing blob and do only ranged pressure bombing, Ice Spikes do nice damage over distance, and Gloom of Night (2 sec cast) is about same as Detonate (instacast). Both can do Rain of Fire/Pit of Shades, though RoF enjoys from Funnel Power procs and WiIldfire procs meaning it might result in 30-50% more damage output potential.

Sorc also had nice utility with Squig Herders, with Sorc providing Infernal Gift to the SHs which would then do the real bomb damage with their M2s. They however were nerfed a few weeks ago, so Infernal Gift makes really little sense to be used unless the Sorc is playing in a party with 2-3 other DPS classes.

Final words: assume that my DPS statistics are not completely faulty (which they are not since I got hundreds of hours on record), and Sorcs peak at 3.5k to 4k damage output, and BWs' peak at 4k to 5k damage output (which is realistic due to Flashfire advantage).
You fill a WB with 4 BWs and 4 Sorcs. 4 BWs together peaking at 5k damage per second mean the Warband damage output is now 20k per second. The Sorc WB with 4 sorcs doing peak damage at 4k x4 means 16k damage per second. It's a big difference, together with BW M2s actually dealing moral damage. More so, if you consider that on average I see my Sorc at 3.5k, meaning that Sorcs lag behind BWs by 20-30% in pure damage per second AoE output.

The situation is however not bad at all, since Destro has few proper organized Warbands who are experienced enough to deal with Order warbands. And Order tends to lack organized Warbands with enough BWs so Destro doesn't melt to the BW bomb too often. However if Order were to run more organized warbands with proper BW bombing cores, Destro could not leave warcamps.


Nynaewe of TUP, rr69
Moreina of The Unlikely Plan, rr48

[Aceboltz]

Thank you for the numbers and insight.

[Hastykrasty]

@OP, just for completeness: Flashfire has an internal cooldown of 3s, which means that procs maximum each 3s (of disrupted spells). It's undoubtedly good, but it's not almighty as someone depicts it.

[Scrilian]

Something I might add on my part, since I've played both sorc and bw here.

1. Flashfire
- while being a great tool for bombing, it actually sort of locks you out of effectively using Close Quarters, since it puts you on GCD on successful insta-proc, nullifying the cast reduction advantage for the follow up cast. Meaning, essentially, Flashfire provides you more bursty damage on-the-move within a certain back-to-back 3sec proc window with a trade off of sustained damage.
So you'd probably be running either FF+RnD or CQ+Focused mind, both are valid options. Don't get me wrong, by no means Flashfire is not a splendid powerful tactic, but there are some downsides constantly overlooked by many. Which brings us to the next point -

2. Ruin and Destruction
- the bread and butter of the bombing. Powerful - of course and with the right coordination could be devastating, but then again, you trade a one trick moral damage, that requires you to put yourself on the front line or you can slot Focused Mind, that provides you with very high sustain damage from any range and if paired with Close Quarters enables you to deal huge pressure given the right target.
My stand on it, having played here in T3 and seen the rvr meta somewhat progress, is that damage morals are more powerful with less gear available, esp. lack of wounds. Given the time, RnD would probably fade away in favor of Focused Mind just as it did on live, at least in the pre-90rr+ patch as far as anything "competitive" is concerned. Heck, I might even say that properly utilized Wind-Woven Shell could be better then.
Not going to touch here on the tools available purely to destro to effectively nullify and hinder order moral bombs with Crushing Blows, Wind of Insanity, etc. while being overall tankier, generally still getting morals much faster or just plain spreading to avoid it and blasting from a far with a ~80ft SK and Infernal Wave shotgun, since this is sort of BW to Sorc comparison.

3. Wildfire
- is the only known case where tactic damage can actually crit on this server. Something must've broken since it I'm pretty sure it never did crit roughly ~1year ago.
Not saying that I'm against it being able to crit, I'm all in favour of all tactic damage scaling up with crit and other tactics, like widely available 50% crit damage ones or Flanking, or affecting the things like Riposte and Swell of Gloom - just as it did on live.
This sort of change to how tactics work on this server never settled rught with me and I didn't quite understand the logic behind this intentional deviation from live made by Aza.
Despite this, I've ran Wildfire for a few raid nights and in fact it does crit, dealing about 200-350 tic on average. Once it did 680~ tic and I'm pretty sure that was a left-over-tic on a debolstered-back ~19lvl SH corpse
As of right now it doesn't proc from Flame Breath or Spreading Flames, which it should coz it always did, but it's fine even if that bugtracker ticket never gets properly addressed, and you are pretty much locked for 3 out of 4 tactics for any kind of bombing, essentially competing for the last slot with Endless Knowledge, Crown of Fire and a few others.

4. Funnel Power
- this on is actually I'm not against in mirroring it back to Sorc in place of Echo of Power. It's strong and in time I've seen that the change from live, aka getting hit back for each target hit, is actually quite balanced. Here I'd lose about ~2k life to Funnel Power backlash from one Rain of Fire channel into destro wb. But then again Discordant Fluctuation hurts quite a bit and On Your Guard! barely affects destro bombing setups whatsoever, so I'm not sure about mirroring of this all together.

TL;DR: BW is overall better at dealing damage, while provides 0 group utility apart from Flame buffs and is somewhat "balanced" given the limitations of tactic slots and wb setups in comparison to it's counterpart, maybe with a slight edge in Funnel Power and not some arbitrary 40% number, but nothing too major that destro couldn't manage

[GodlessCrom]

Ensorcelled Agony, the dot tactic SM get that adds a 5 second DoT to Ensorcelled Blow, can also crit IIRC. Not quite the same as a BW crit of course

[Scrilian]

And I forgot, I'm almost certain that Funnel Power and both Reckless Gamble/Hurtin' Time do no proc anything by themselves, unless a dev can prove me otherwise.
Now someone mentioned that Loudmouth can crit as well >_<

[GodlessCrom]

Potent Enchantments might also be able to crit. Havent played SM in a while, cant remember. Sorry for the tangent. Apparently, lots of tactics can crit

[Serrow]

Man, I really didn't realize just how far apart the two classes are. That's kind of disheartening.

.. At least Sorcs look edgier?

[JoyToy]

Yea mirrors in this game are kind of a blurry concept. It is probably why balancing this game is pretty much mission impossible as both sides don't even have the same skills in many many cases.