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1 year ago ::
Mar 20, 2009 - 5:08PM
#1
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I am impressed by just how much an invoker can flat-out be a striker if it wants to.
A good wrath covenant invoker can drop any of the lvl 1, lvl 5, lvl 9, lvl 15, lvl 20, lvl 29 daily summons or conjurations. Most of these angels or blades are minor action to attack or just flat out immediate interrupt, and deal as much as a warlock's eldritch blast in some cases.
That same round, you can drop a divine bolt on two enemies, including the same one your angel just opened a can on.
The enemy that took two attacks gets as much damage as a deep-damage striker. Plus the other dude who took about half as much from a divine bolt in his rear.
If you drop an Angel with your invoker every encounter, you can easily make strikers look bad at their jobs, and at the same time exert some control with your other encounter powers and at-wills (grasping shards).
Check the math, you'll see I'm not kidding.
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1 year ago ::
Mar 20, 2009 - 6:00PM
#2
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Repeat after me: Daily.
Comparing what a character can do once a day to what another character can do in every single encounter is a classic strawman argument.
-SYB
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1 year ago ::
Mar 20, 2009 - 7:45PM
#3
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Wow, how ignorant and condescending.
Try actually reading the power descriptions. The summoned creature is there for the entire encounter. For instance, when I use a minor action to summon an angel of victory in the first round, as long as my angel is still alive, I get to use a minor action a round to make it attack, every round. Thus and therefore, it is a daily that keeps on giving.
Also, did you note that you can take up to three of these dailies at a time, and that the usual adventuring day is about four encounters?
Do the math with a warlock vs. a summoner invoker. You'll see that my point stands. An invoker can essentially be a striker if it wants to be.
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1 year ago ::
Mar 20, 2009 - 7:52PM
#4
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Warlocks are borderline failures as strikers. Compare the Invoker's striker potential to that of an archery Ranger for a better comparison.
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1 year ago ::
Mar 20, 2009 - 9:32PM
#5
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By the time you can have three of these dailies (level 9 at the earliest), most strikers are doing significant damage. A daily that mimics half an at-will each round plus an at-will is not even vaguely comparable to real striker damage.
If you want to compare apples to oranges, go ahead, but apples compare much better to apples.
Fine, you are using a daily in every encounter, so will I. My barbarian will pop a rage at the start of every encounter. Just about every single rage significantly ramps up barbarian damage for the encounter, way beyond what your invoker is doing.
Alternately, I might pop a stance. Most striker stances will add more than enough damage to overwhelm your invoker's damage. Heck, alternately, I can just open up with a big damage, multi-attack daily. The burst damage from that alone is probably equal to 2 or 3 rounds of your daily + at-will combo.
You are making a false comparison. The moment you assume a daily power is being used, you must assume both parties are using it. And once you make that assumption, your damage is well below the damage of a striker.
-SYB
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1 year ago ::
Mar 20, 2009 - 9:42PM
#6
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Warlocks are borderline failures as strikers. Compare the Invoker's striker potential to that of an archery Ranger for a better comparison.
Warlocks are not borderline failures as strikers. They focus more on mobility and status effects (which is another way to hamper a single target) than an archery ranger. Strikers are not just damage machines; if that were the case, then all strikers except the Ranger would be obsolete.
Which brings me to my next point about the Invoker: it's seriously lacking in mobility compared to actual strikers. I'm honestly not seeing Invokers having the damage potential that the OP suggests. Keep in mind that summons have HP equal to your bloodied value, and so they don't last the entire encounter if the enemies don't want them to. If they're significantly hurting the enemy, they will become a high priority target. Which will divert damage from the PCs (since the Invoker will only lose a surge when its summon takes bloodied value damage), making the summons good controlling powers, but once that summon is gone the damage potential is as well.
And as an Invoker with controller HP and surges, I wouldn't want to toss around too many summons (especially if you're the build that doesn't have CON secondary...).
Edit: Another point about the Invoker summons: they won't be too difficult to hit, since Invokers typically don't have the greatest AC...
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1 year ago ::
Mar 20, 2009 - 10:09PM
#7
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By the time you can have three of these dailies (level 9 at the earliest), most strikers are doing significant damage. A daily that mimics half an at-will each round plus an at-will is not even vaguely comparable to real striker damage.
If you want to compare apples to oranges, go ahead, but apples compare much better to apples.
Fine, you are using a daily in every encounter, so will I. My barbarian will pop a rage at the start of every encounter. Just about every single rage significantly ramps up barbarian damage for the encounter, way beyond what your invoker is doing.
Alternately, I might pop a stance. Most striker stances will add more than enough damage to overwhelm your invoker's damage. Heck, alternately, I can just open up with a big damage, multi-attack daily. The burst damage from that alone is probably equal to 2 or 3 rounds of your daily + at-will combo.
You are making a false comparison. The moment you assume a daily power is being used, you must assume both parties are using it. And once you make that assumption, your damage is well below the damage of a striker.
-SYB
Ok. Let's trot out the numbers. I'm going to make the following assumptions.
1.) In order to be a striker, one must be approaching or exceeding the deep damaging power of the WEAKEST striker (not the strongest.) I don't know any strikers well except for the warlock (so I'm not going to argue your barbarian point.) Since a poster above said that the warlock is the weakest striker, I'll use the warlock as my example.
2.) To address your point about the use of dailies, I will use as the second criterion a completely ridiculous and impossible benchmark: the warlock using a daily for 10 actions in a battle. Impossible by the rules, I know. But this is just for illustration. It's also for simplicity so I don't have to use 1 daily, 4 encounters and 5 at-wills and tabulate all the numbers.
3.) The invoker uses only one summoned creature, and one at-will for 10 actions in a battle.
4.) All attacks hit. Another stupid criteria, but I think the argument is generally illustrative of damage potential across both attacks chosen.
5.) I'm choosing level 30 as a point of comparison. They have +6 implements.
So:
We have a scourge warlock build, hellock, tiefling. He went Demigod, so we will assume CON of 28, Int of 26. He took Hurl through Hell at level 29. He also took the +1 feat to fire.
What damage for Hurl through Hell:
7d10 (38.5) + 9 (Con) + 10.5 (Curse) + 1 (Feat) + 6 (Implement) = 65.
Daily x 10 (!) = 650. Not even possible.
We also have a Wrath Covenant Invoker. He also went Demigod, and is human (Wis 30, Con 24). He took Summon Angel of Victory at level 29.
What damage for a joint attack of Avenging Light and the Angel of Victory.
2d10 (11) + 10 (Wis) + 6 (Implement) + 2d10 (11, angel) + 10 (Wis, angel) + 6 (Implement) = 54.
x10 = 540. Not bad.
If you add the condition for avenging light, you get 610. Also respectable.
540 (610) < 650, right? Oh yeah, we were comparing one daily and 10 at-wills to TEN DAILIES. Don't forget too that the invoker can easily bust out his four encounters while his angel happily whacks away.
Of course, if we went with the Invoker's Divine Bolts as the at-will instead, you'd get a small fraction less deep damage, but a great deal more overall damage.
Anyhow, this analysis doesn't necessarily prove or disprove how strikery an invoker is, because there are a lot of moving parts and variables I disregarded in the interest of my time, but hopefully it makes people think that there could be something to it.
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1 year ago ::
Mar 21, 2009 - 7:10AM
#8
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Again you are making a strawman argument. First, I'll choose the daily: Doom of Delban. The main point of this choice is that it can be sustained for the entire combat and it can switch targets. As I said, comparing apples to apples.
Second, you don't assume auto-hit. That makes things like miss damage meaningless. The basic assumption is a 50% hit chance. The complicated assumption has to do with average NADs. I'll use the basic assumption here (it actually gives your build an advantage).
Now with Doom of Delban active and a 50% hit chance (using most of the same assumptions you did on stats), we get: 46 damage on a hit and 23 damage on a miss (the feat bonus should be +3, not +1 because elemental feats scale and are better for this build).
Ah, but wait, Doom of Delban gets more powerful each round:
Rd 1: 46/23
Rd 2: 51/25
Rd 3: 57/28
Rd 4: 62/31
Rd 5: 68/34
Rd 6: 73/36
Rd 7: 79/39
Rd 8: 84/42
Rd 9: 90/45
Rd 10: 95/47
Total average damage over 10 rounds: 527
Assuming your numbers are right and assuming a 50% hit chance, your total average damage over 10 rounds is: 305
We have a winner. And honestly, that is assuming no other wacky toys of any sort. Also, my damage was more focused (one enemy until dead, then move on). Your damage was spread among two enemies at a bare minimum. Technically, I took ~99 damage from this experiment, but as a Con-lock, I have zounds more hit points than your invoker.
Small side note: I actually should have a little more damage in this build. A human warlock is a much better choice than a tiefling for this example.
Finally, my assumptions above are being generous to you. With a build like this, I would almost certainly have lasting frost and wintertouched. That combo alone would add another 60 or 70 damage to the average.
Invokers aren't strikers. They don't even play good ones on TV.
-SYB
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1 year ago ::
Mar 21, 2009 - 7:43AM
#9
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An Invoker stands in the middle of an enemy army.
He activates Channel Divinity: Power of Amaunator (PoA)
He activates his Staff of the War Mage to increase his burst effect by 1.
He casts the level 25 Daily Anthem of the First Dawn (close burst 10, increased to 11 by Staff of the Warmage).
Since he's in the middle of an army, every square is occupied by an enemy.
Assuming he's wearing Shimmering Armor (No OA against him)
Assuming he has Covenant of Wrath(CoW) (+1 damage on daily and encounter powers)
Assuming he has Astral Fire feat(AF) (+1 radiant damage)
Assuming a wisdom of 26 (+8 Mod)
Damage per target:
6d6+Wis+1d10 (PoA)+1(CoW)+1(AF)+6(Implement)
Power covers an area of 22x22, so 484-1 for the Invoker's space = 483 squares. 50% hit, so that's 241 hits, 241 misses. Targets take half damage on Miss.
Total Damage/round: 1446d6+241*Wis+241d10(PoA)+241(CoW)+241(AF)+1446(Imp)
Multiply that by 1.5 to incorporate misses.
(1446*3+241*8+241*5+241+241+1446)*1.5=14098 average radiant damage... in one round.
That's not taking crits into account. Any Invoker worth his salt would take Speaker of the Gods feat, which allows crits on 18-20, which would no doubt bump these number significantly.
Obviously, since the Invoker likely won't kill everything, he'll be dead the next round. But, hey, he went out with a bang.
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1 year ago ::
Mar 21, 2009 - 9:24AM
#10
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I am impressed by just how much an invoker can flat-out be a striker if it wants to.
I was rather unimpressed myself. But if you have a good build, please post it on the CharOps forum.
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