Channeling vs. Improved Wisdom Casting

[vastin]

Channeling vs. Improved Wisdom Casting

One of the more interesting comparisons you have to make as a wisdom caster is how many points to put into major spell power abilities such as Channeling and Imp Wis Casting.

The answer, as it turns out comes down to two significant factors:

1) how risk averse are you - can you deal with a 10-20% failure chance on your primary attack spells?

2) Would you rather be able to consistently cast lower power/duration buffs, or take some time to do special high power buffs that are very difficult to cast?

Lets take Alph with a base wisdom of 30, and 20 points in channeling - he reduces the base cost of all his spells by 60!

This means Alph can throw a base 90 cost spell for 30 at a 100% success rate. That's a very solid base power for a wisdom attack spell at lvl 20ish. Should hit for over 10k with a decent spellcraft, or more with elementalism.

Unfortunately, that's about it for Alph. By base cost 94, his spells already have a 21% failure rate. By 180 they fail 50% of the time, and his risk limit is 375, with a 75% failure rate.

Now we'll look at Bob, with a base wisdom of 30, and 20 points in IWC - alas, he is limited to cost 30 spells if he wants a 100% success rate, so his guaranteed attack spells are considerably weaker. However, if Bob is willing to accept some risk of failure, he can build a 130 cost spell with a 20% fail rate. Technically his damage output with this spell should exceed that of Alph's, but he takes some risks of running a bad streak or not getting off that shot he desperately needs as an orc axe swings for his head...

The greater advantage Bob gets is for buffs - If Bob is willing to blow a few turns before going around the corner to hit the boss, he can afford to throw a couple 2099 cost buffs on himself with enormous power and/or durations. They only have a 20% success rate, but they should be able to last more than enough extra time to make up for the delay in casting them - as long as you don't have to cast it while a Prismatic Dragon is gnawing on you.

Similarly, if Bob likes to play a REALLY streaky game, he can construct very high intensity ball spells with a huge damage code and radius - he'll just have to spam that macro key until his big gun finally goes off - and pray that it DOES in fact go off before the target(s) reach him.

In the late game I suspect that IWC really outshines Channeling by a wide margin. Channeling gains no benefit from item bonuses, whereas IWC does, and IWC has a much greater multiplying effect that scales well into the endgame, whereas Channeling is quite powerful early on, but becomes gradually insignificant - it is not unreasonable for a high level wisdom caster to throw buff/summon spells of 100k+ base cost in the late game (albiet with a 15% success rate), and 10k spells with a 10% fail rate. Whereas the dedicated Channeling caster may never really exceed a couple thousand point base cost spells.

The correlary of this is - if you are a wisdom caster with points invested in IWC, but you build most/all your spells for 100% success rate, then you really aren't getting any benefit from IWC, buy Channeling instead!

Finally, never, ever play a crafter/channeler. 100% lose. Crafter wis-casters can only benefit from IWC.

[zekk]

Well, Channeling gives the bonus of multi-spells.
"Alph" could cast 5 base 60 bolts in one turn, effectively making it a base 300. it would still cost 0 since all of the parts of it cost 0.

Plus, I'd imagine the better skill is the one that is class level 6 required. Maybe.

[vastin]

Excellent point! I'd totally overlooked that!

Now, that's assuming that Channeling reduces the cost of each EFFECT, rather than the final cost of the SPELL. I'm not sure that's the case - I'll have to check it out. Given that most cost reducing abilities are keyed to a category of effects, I'll bet you're right and that it is the individual effects that are reduced in cost.

In fact, if the base cost is actually reduced to zero, then Alph could fire an unlimited number of base 60 bolts with a single spell, unless spells are limited to 5 effects? Never tried to put that many on a single spell.

Even at a minimum cost of one per spell effect he could fire about 7 bolts (cost 42) before he exceeded his automatic success threshold.

Needless to say, if this is the case then Channeling outstrips IWC vastly in power pretty much all the way to the endgame. IWC would still theoretically be better for individual buffs, but now at a cost of vastly reduced standard firepower and healing effects. Almost certainly not worth it.

Also because Channeling would let you reliably throw several short but fairly powerful buffs/summons as a single action, you could have a lot more effects for the same number of spell slots. IWC does not generally benefit at all from casting that way.

[vastin]

Another point I just recalled about multi-bolting is that 5 power 60 bolts actually do much better damage than 1 lvl 300 bolt, because the ratio of cost to power becomes gradually worse as you increase the level of the spell, so the Channeling multi-caster has yet another advantage there.

The only place you might be at a disadvantage is against creatures with a resist chance against the spell, as I think they generally have a better resistance check against low level spells than high level ones?

Still, its not like your lvl 60 spell is really going to be 'low' per-se, so you'll probably punch through with most of them in any case...

[zekk]

Yeah, it's limited to 5 effects.
I did this with mysticism school focus, but I would think it works with channeling as well - you can have a spell that is 3 0 cost attacks and 2 0 cost heals. harm your opponent and heal yourself in the same turn is pretty good.

they might resist it easier? yeah, but they'll have to do it 5 times.
Unless there is only 1 of that effect in the spell.....

[Variaz]

Free multi-effects are probably better overall, unless the monster would have a static damages soak. (there is only one such enemy at the moment, and it's a special quest one).

A power 300 spell will either do nothing(spell is countered, resisted, etc...), or huge damages. With 5 power 60 bolts, there is a lower chance to do full damages, but a higher chance of doing SOME damages.

However, the free multi-effect is, well, free. That, and multi-spells are better at taking on enemies with extra lives. There's not much of these at the moment, but you can expect a lot of them in the future releases. The only disadvantage of free multi-effects is that you have to spend some AP in some abilities. But I think it's a fair trade.

[sekira]

Since I'm the one who authored the Channeling ability (but Big V actually implemented it, thanks V!) I'll throw my 2 cents in here.

I wanted an ability to give wis casters some kind of option for 0 cost casting, because otherwise they were completely left out of the whole 5 effects casting groove that mana casters could get through the specialist abilities of High Mage.

I sort of disagree about the channeling not being compatible with crafting though. It works great if you plan to put all your stat gain points in wis (the only wis points that affect channeling are base points, meaning stat gain points only), and then fill in for con and chr and anything else you need with your crafted items. Now, this doesn't work great with dwarves, who get the great crafting bonus, because their wis stat gets a penalty, but there are abilities that make up for that (monk wisdom, and if you are patient to get alignment, Kensai Honorable Warrior, although I'm not sure that is in the main build yet, because I authored that class). You can also use crafting skill with a non-dwarf character (gasp!) and it can work out quite well.

It is true though that channeling and IWC don't really mix together well, at least not in the current range of levels (<Clevel 30 is where most characters can get to by the end of chapter 1). If you try to take both to get the best of both worlds, you will probably end up with the worst of all worlds, heh.

I'll admit, I wonder if channeling is really worth it some times, but I think it could be a good choice for some build types. You have to get creative. One thing is for sure, channeling requires a lot of base points in wis to be effective, so don't even think about it if you are planning on putting most of your stat gains anywhere else. The flat spell cost reduction just breaks even with the specialist abilities at 30 wis, and channeling gives no % reduction on top of it... so pump the wis, pump the channeling, and get some good spell combos in there and see what happens.

Basically, here is how they break down:

IWC: great for buff spells, or some summoning situations... anything that is really high cost, but you don't need it to absolutely work every time, you can cast it a couple times to get it to work.

Channeling: great for little spells, comboing spells together, utility spells (if you can get enough reduction from channeling to get 40 pt spells at 0 cost, the whole game changes, I think)

Wisdom, or Honorable Warrior: damage. since these improve your wisdom stat itself, they improve casting strength along with the damage you do from spell power, both at the same time. This is the way to go for elemental spells. Mixing in some channeling doesn't hurt your 5 mini bolt combo, and mixing in IWC can give you some 75% success rate spells that are really devestating, if you can live with the 25% failure rate (can you say chain spells with radius?).

I think the wisdom or Honorable Warrior are the way to go for the most part, though. I stay away from IWC because it doesn't become really worth it until 10AP, and that just isn't feasable if you are already putting 10 AP or more in wisdom or Honorable Warrior (I like more, always more, heh) Channeling could be fun too, but again, not worth it until you can put like 10 AP in it. For the beta as it stands, there just aren't enough levels to go around...

If I could play to 100 though, you can bet every wis caster I make will have 20 IWC, and probably some Channeling too, along with 40 or more in Wisdom or Honorable Warrior. Now that would be a fun wis caster to play.

[vastin]

I ran a celestial priest up to 12th or so last night trying out channeling and multi-casting. It definitely feels a lot stronger than the usual IWC build. Throwing in a heal on the final effect of all my offensive spells (and having a 5-effect heal for serious fights), is a really big boost. I've been able to afford a lot more spare points for con, def, agl, and magic def in this build than in the IWC build without sacrificing offensively.

Another side advantage of multi-cast bolts is when you are firing down a line of creatures you'll often kill several in a row for a much lower cost than a true chain spell.

Not a particularly good summoning build though, unless you want to summon 5 creatures that all kind of suck. <shrug>

Still squishy even with more points in con/defenses! It's tricky going back to 'mortal' builds after playing low level crafters with 3000AC and 2500 HP that prefer to fight mosters 10 levels over their head.

[zekk]

something else I think is being forgotten. Channeling works off your Base wisdom.
IWC works off of your wisdom.
"bob" has a base wisdom of 30, but he is probably an elf/celestial priest, which gives 2 25% bonuses to wisdom. He probably actually has somewhere around 45 wisdom to work with.
that, and any bonuses he gets from equipment.

[vastin]

Early in the game (up through lvl 20 certainly), Channeling seems to be a lot more powerful than IWC, assuming you're playing a pretty standard Blow-Stuff-Up(tm) build, and using multi-casting.

With the staggering multipliers it can get in the late game, it is possible that IWC may eventually pass channeling because it gains bonuses from items. But I don't think it ever does unless your item bonuses are several times your base wisdom.

If you're playing a caster with 125 natural wisdom, but are getting 300 additional points off of items, then there's a pretty good argument for the IWC caster finally surpassing the Channeling caster - but that is going to happen really, really late in the game, and at the success ratio you're going to want to cast most of your spells (75% or better), I think the chaneller may still be ahead.

At 125 Wis +300 item bonus (late endgame states), and either 60 IWC or 60 Channeling, the channeler would be throwing 5 effects at a base cost of ~750 each, while the IWC caster would probably throw one between 8000-11000 cost and a fail rate of 20-25%. That looks like a clean win for IWC, but because most spell effects increase their cost non-linearly, it probably isn't that clear, and depends on the cost ratio of the spell in question. I suspect they actually tend to lose out a bit.

Now at +500 wis from items, the IWC caster jumps to a spell range of 12k-16k cost per effect, while the channeler's costs don't change at all, just the damage/effect benefits. So really it comes down to how much overall item bonus caster can expect to accumulate late in the game, and how much of it they can dedicate to wisdom.

A crafter, who can safely assume 800+ item bonus that they can dedicate to wisdom will almost certainly want to be an IWC type for best effect!

[vastin]

I did a bunch more math on the IWC vs. Channeling caster.

Because of the decreasing efficiency of higher power spells:
10 mana = 15 power
2600 mana = 400 power

I ran the numbers for a late game IWC vs. Channeler build and came up with the following numbers:

100 Base Wisdom
+ 800 Item Bonus
40 Elementalism
80 Spellcraft

With 60 AP in Channeling, the caster can throw a 180 power multi-bolt for 65.25M with a 100% success rate.

With 60 AP in IWC, the caster can throw a ~1208 power mono-bolt for 87.5M with a 75% success rate.

Needless to say that given the guarantee of a 100% ratio, and the increased flexibility of a multi-bolt spell (kill multiple targets, prismatic attacks, mixing in healing or vulnerability spells), the Channeling caster still comes out quite a bit ahead. But on pure statistics, 8:1 seems to be the wisdom itemization ratio for IWC to keep pace with channeling in the late game.

----

Ugh. Forgot about cost reduction from Specialization. If that modifier is applied BEFORE the channeling cost reduction, then the channeler generally becomes more powerful, though both benefit.

If the cost modifier for specialization is applied AFTER the channeling cost reduction, then it does very little for the channeler, and makes IWC somewhat more competitive. I have no idea which is the case.

[vastin]

Hmm. If Channeling works off your base wisdom score, before ANY racial, class or item modifiers, does that mean that it's calculated before your race and class Penalties as well?

If that's the case, then races with wis penalties need not be overly concerned about them as regards channeling.

[sekira]

Aug 6, 2008 0:42:56 GMT -5 vastin said:

Hmm. If Channeling works off your base wisdom score, before ANY racial, class or item modifiers, does that mean that it's calculated before your race and class Penalties as well?

If that's the case, then races with wis penalties need not be overly concerned about them as regards channeling.

I'm about 99% sure that you are correct.

This makes a dwarven crafter wis caster using channeling quite potent...

They can pump every stat gain point into wis, and fill in their con and other stats with crafted eq, as well as helping to up the wis a bit for casting strength and elemental damage multiplier purposes.

[sekira]

Aug 6, 2008 0:32:37 GMT -5 vastin said:

...
----

Ugh. Forgot about cost reduction from Specialization. If that modifier is applied BEFORE the channeling cost reduction, then the channeler generally becomes more powerful, though both benefit.

If the cost modifier for specialization is applied AFTER the channeling cost reduction, then it does very little for the channeler, and makes IWC somewhat more competitive. I have no idea which is the case.

I'm pretty certain that the later is true.

I'm still convinced that in late game your best bet is to focus mainly on wisdom or Honorable Warrior, and just put 10 to 20 AP in IWC and channeling.

Lets assume your 100 base wis, 800 wis from items, 40 elemental skill, 80 spellcraft skill (I'm thinking those skills would be higher by this point in actuality)

lets look at 20 IWC, 40 Honorable Warrior (with +5 alignment)

Honorable Warrior gives you a bonus of +1000% to wis... so your wis isn't 900 any more it is 1900.

IWC gives you a mono bolt at 1135 power... 1135 x 1895 x 5 x 17 = 182.8M damage

Look at 20 channeling, 40 Honorable Warrior now...

You get multibolts at 119 power (5 bolts), now this puts you at around 1850 mana cost, but that is lower than your wis so it is still 100% success... which works out to a total of 95.8M damage

if you have 10 channeling and 10 IWC and 40 Honorable warrior, then you get 74.9M damage from multi bolts with 100% success, or 138.2M from a mono bolt with 75% success.

Another nice aspect of focussing more on Honorable warrior is that you don't have to put all your tweak points from blues into wis, you can spread it around a little bit... maybe get more spellcraft and elemental skills, more speed, stuff that can really help.

Take a look at this:

Same guy, (10/10/40 AP split) only he only put 400 of his tweak points into wis, 100 in spellcraft, 100 in elemental, 200 in speed and whatever else you want...

total wis is 1500 now, but now he is doing a 803 power mono bolt for 803 x 1495 x 15 x 37 = 666.3M damage at 75% success

or 88 power multibolts for 88 x 5 x 1495 x 15 x 37 = 365.1M total damage from multibolts at 100% success rate

This would be a little less power for mysticism, conjuring, alteration or divination spells (at least some of them, those that rely on wis for effect or resistance roll) but massively more power for elemental type spells, and 200 tweak points of extra stuff to boot (100 speed?, 600 reflection?, 200 magic defense?, etc)

[vastin]

Aug 6, 2008 12:04:30 GMT -5 sekira said:

lets look at 20 IWC, 40 Honorable Warrior (with +5 alignment)

Honorable Warrior gives you a bonus of +1000% to wis... so your wis isn't 900 any more it is 1900.

Yeah, Champion of good is likewise potentially 'boundless' in its effect.

Are those skills capped at a maximum alignment bonus - or is alignment permanently limited to +5? Otherwise they will both continue to become more and more absurdly powerful as new content is released.

I'm assuming right now that the only way to get positive alignment points is to finish certain quests?