RDM Scortch

[Singularity]

So, you want a reason to never cast Verholy/Verflare ever again.

Yes, that is the point. Care should be taken with the potency values to ensure it doesn't become correct to waste a load of mana overcapping just to get access to Scorch mind.

[Mansion]

Yes, that is the point. Care should be taken with the potency values to ensure it doesn't become correct to waste a load of mana overcapping just to get access to Scorch mind.

Being even on mana is quite rare. We are actually building ressources not to be even to get the free proc after the finisher.
The only even situation I can think of is 100/100 on mana, and usually means there was a mana loss (and thus a DPS loss).
Introducing your finisher would require some kind of ability that cuts through one pool of mana so you can actually control the amounts you want to generate, and let's face it, adding small mental calculation (how much X spell do I need to reach X amount of mana?) would have people roar with rage (see Ridorana). While I like the idea of a rotation a bit more "complex" than reaching more than 80/80, I understand it could easily turn into a hassle.

[Archwizard]

Yes, that is the point. Care should be taken with the potency values to ensure it doesn't become correct to waste a load of mana overcapping just to get access to Scorch mind.

Bearing in mind for a moment that the skill you suggest also includes both Verquick procs and comes away with 33% higher effective Mana gain than either existing Verfinisher, mitigating any lost Mana from slight overcap:

Making an ability that's far and away better than two other existing abilities competing for the same job means creating excess button bloat -- we'll be dragging two dead weights behind us, all for the sake of removing one of the few elements of spontaneity and reactivity we have from the job.

Hard pass.

[PatronasCharm]

Being even on mana is quite rare. We are actually building ressources not to be even to get the free proc after the finisher.
The only even situation I can think of is 100/100 on mana, and usually means there was a mana loss (and thus a DPS loss).
Introducing your finisher would require some kind of ability that cuts through one pool of mana so you can actually control the amounts you want to generate, and let's face it, adding small mental calculation (how much X spell do I need to reach X amount of mana?) would have people roar with rage (see Ridorana). While I like the idea of a rotation a bit more "complex" than reaching more than 80/80, I understand it could easily turn into a hassle.

Yeah true, it is super rare to get an even balance unless you save up to 100/100. Thus why we get a "Verfire / Verstone" ready if White is lower then you use Verholy, or vise-versa which I know is the initial design. I do agree too if we'd have to begin making mental calculations, "oh crap, okay, I should have casted Verthunder instead of Aero! Crap lol." The way it currently plays is pretty perfect.

So as far a DoT goes, again I believe it should be a mechanic behind our rotation, thus why I felt, without jeopardizing our rotation, tacking it on to Scorch. Heck, Scorch to me is what being burned? Flare burns, Holy burns, thus why I felt Scorch adding that DoT could have worked, even if the Potency is reduced by 200, and a DoT of idk, 50? That way we're still doing our basic rotations to maintain that DoT on the enemy. Because to be frank, I don't use my Combo unless its a hard enemy or a Boss fight, so keeping a DoT on that boss, would encourage to fill meter as quickly as possible and combo as much as possible.

The DoT, would have to be long, and mild, because I forget how long it takes me to get 80/80 without Manafestation, or by using Enchanted Reprise it increases DoT duration, that's -10/10 with a tacked on damage.

Again, this entire thing just came from my speculation over Scorch, didn't know what it did until I found it online. I doubt they'll do any overhaul right now, with the expansion being just around the corner and all.

I am eager to engage with 5.0 RDM and see how much smoother it is without all the button bloating.

But looking into the future, which is 2 years out, maybe we'll see Verwater / Verblizzard / Verfreeze or Verflood, even an interesting DoT added to a new combo finisher.

Thanks for the all the replies and discussions, yall

=)

[Singularity]

Bearing in mind for a moment that the skill you suggest also includes both Verquick procs and comes away with 33% higher effective Mana gain than either existing Verfinisher, mitigating any lost Mana from slight overcap:

Making an ability that's far and away better than two other existing abilities competing for the same job means creating excess button bloat -- we'll be dragging two dead weights behind us, all for the sake of removing one of the few elements of spontaneity and reactivity we have from the job.

11 of each colour totals 22 mana, as opposed to 21. The additional proc (since the existing finishers already give you a proc) is worth an extra 3 vs. a Jolt, so the overall gain in mana alone is 4. Also there's no button bloat, since all three finishers replace existing buttons when they are ready in 5.0.

Anyway, the exact numbers are not even remotely important. The idea was to give the player something extra to play for within the RDM gameplay design of managing procs to maximise higher-potency casts. Right now, we aim to engineer our mana bars to "above 80/80, not equal and no existing proc on the lower of the two". My suggestion would make the "best" result be "above 80/80, exactly equal and no procs at all", so a more difficult situation to create, but a higher reward if you can pull it off.

[Archwizard]

11 of each colour totals 22 mana, as opposed to 21. The additional proc (since the existing finishers already give you a proc) is worth an extra 3 vs. a Jolt, so the overall gain in mana alone is 4.

One Verfinisher gives you 21 mana and a proc worth another 9 mana, or 30 total.

Your proposal gives you 22 mana with two procs worth another 9 mana each, or 40 total.

Also, if we assume Scorch stays the same in this example, someone who hits 100/100 will be one GCD and a Manafication away from unleashing another combo immediately after, which makes the "cost" of hitting 100/100 moot.

The idea was to give the player something extra to play for within the RDM gameplay design of managing procs to maximise higher-potency casts.

You're "giving something extra" at the cost of other skills.

If you make a new skill too appealing, gunning for it will be the top priority. The only "extra bonuses" in theorycraft are procs, and even those can be gamed.

Right now, we aim to engineer our mana bars to "above 80/80, not equal and no existing proc on the lower of the two". My suggestion would make the "best" result be "above 80/80, exactly equal and no procs at all"

You know what would accomplish the same task, without eliminating the two Verfinishers we have?

Just changing the existing Verfinishers' phrasing to "higher than or equal to".

[Singularity]

The value of a proc is not simply the mana gained from the Verstone/Verfire. Since the spells are GCD, casting one means pushing out another spell that could have been cast in that GCD, almost certainly a Jolt. Since you're sacrificing a spell that gives 6 mana for one that gives 9, the value of the proc is actually only +3.

I agree that we wouldn't want the best finisher to be so good that it makes it worth overcapping or ignoring procs. There should be situations where Verholy/Verflare are correct, thus creating gameplay by allowing the player a situation to evaluate and a decision to make. I put in some rough numbers, but those could easily be tweaked to produce the desired effect.

Changing the phrasing on Verholy/Verflare doesn't quite achieve the same effect. The proposed Scorch gives the player an extra, harder situation to aim for (with a higher reward for hitting it). Changing the existing finishers would simply remove the need to set up unequal mana, so you'd actually have fewer things to take into consideration during gameplay. "I don't need to worry if my mana is equal or not" isn't the same as "I want to set up my mana to be equal".

[Archwizard]

I agree that we wouldn't want the best finisher to be so good that it makes it worth overcapping or ignoring procs. There should be situations where Verholy/Verflare are correct, thus creating gameplay by allowing the player a situation to evaluate and a decision to make. I put in some rough numbers, but those could easily be tweaked to produce the desired effect.

Alright, let's say we play it your way.

Scorch: Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 580.
Additional Effect: Increases both White Mana and Black Mana by 9
Additional Effect: Become both Verfire Ready and Verstone Ready if Black Mana is exactly equal to White Mana at time of execution.
Can only be executed after landing Enchanted Redoublement.

Tada, a version that is by that standard exactly equal to the other Verfinishers.
We finally have a third finisher that's not worth "overcapping or ignoring procs" while leaving value for the other two buttons.

1) How do you intend to uptune this to "reward a harder situation" and make it worthwhile without turning it into the "lazy option" for, frankly, the types of players who macro their rotation or refuse to cast DoTs?
2) Mechanically, what's the upshot to our gameplay of having three buttons for the same task, outside of satisfying this compulsory sense of "immediate balance"?

[Singularity]

(apologies if this thread has somewhat derailed, I didn't intend to elaborate on this idea so much)

Firstly, the last part needs to be slightly reworded:
Additional Effect: Become both Verstone Ready and Verfire Ready.
* Jolt II is changed to Scorch upon landing Enchanted Redoublement as a combo action while Black Mana and White Mana are equal.

So, it's not that you only get the procs if your mana is equal, it's that you can only use the spell at all if your mana is equal.

As for how to balance it to be better than the current finishers (but not always), I would consider that the disadvantages this spell has are that it is likely to take longer to set up since you need to tune your mana more precisely, and that the easiest way to equal your mana is to hit 100/100 so you might lose some mana overcapping. Theorycrafters tell us that a point of mana is worth 4.5 potency (this number will need to be adjusted for new skill changes, but this is just an example - there will always be some potency value for a point of mana).

If we keep the +11/+11, then the extra 4 mana generated alone makes this spell worth 18 more potency than a Verholy/Verflare, but we can do more still. In the media tour build, the existing finishers have 600 potency. Let's say we set Scorch at 640 (so 58 total potency more including the mana gain).
We end up with a situation where Scorch is better than Verholy/Verflare, unless you are losing 13 or more mana overcapping just to set up Scorch (less if you have a proc that would get overwritten too) or using a Verholy/Verflare would allow you to get your combo off quicker, thus either landing the combo under buffs that more than compensate for the potency loss (Trick Attack for example) or catching the target before it dies or leaves the field or does a mechanic that you really needed to get the damage in before (exploding adds for example).

What this does to our gameplay is give us an extra, higher target to aim for, and thus more advanced situation evaluation and decision-making, which is the core of RDM gameplay design.

[Archwizard]

So here's my take: we don't need to be rewarded for balance. In fact, we actively shouldn't be rewarded for it.

Thanks to that lovely Mana cap we have, we can at any time choose to balance our Mana. But we're designed that we never should by this method, to make it painfully clear that capping is bad for our DPS, and more than just "slightly". Arguably it could be considered harder to imbalance Mana without wasting active procs, especially as you get close to the Mana cap; this commonality is a large part of what makes the addition of Reprise so functional, to give us more breathing room to set up our Mana before hitting cap.
The current Verfinishers, sloppy though they may seem, accomplish in their requirement for imbalance a simple incentive not to cap your Mana -- but by the current design, the existence of a skill that can be executed and rewards you for capping out or just spamming Jolt to keep balance should be treated as a consolation for failing to execute other skills.

As we've already seen with attitudes around Engagement, "consolation" skills are not appreciated, and are treated more as a waste of design space that serve to bandaid other inherent problems within a kit.
And to say a "balance" Verfinisher should be stronger is like giving us Engagement and then making it stronger than Displacement.

If the design swerve we were served by the Verfinishers was to go out of our way to imbalance Mana, to turn back around and compel us to rebalance our Mana like we all were doing from 50 to 68 is a step backward for our gameplay, dumbing it down to an earlier state rather than building upon it.

But most importantly, and I cannot stress this enough, having 3 spells designed to accomplish one task -- regardless of how they're tuned -- is just too many freaking finishers. It's not about split-second decisions, it's about really asking to spend design resources and limited advancements on a spell that either invalidates existing spells or accomplishes a task they could with smaller adjustments, so you can glance at your Mana, go "oh I'm already 80/8X", and play whack-a-mole based on the value of X, now with 10% more laziness and a third hammering arm.
Two Verfinishers already gets weird looks for have two spells that are just the same description, but they get a pass specifically because of the intent of the Balance gauge as something that represents the volatility of two opposing forces, always in flux, never to be perfectly balanced but simply to be kept in check.
Three is just freaking ridiculous.