As someone who almost exclusively played wizard, i do think it's at least worth mentioning that due to having such ass interaction speed i got kicked out of trying to open chests because my teammates open them faster a lot. This would of course result in less loot. Incredible video by the way, i hope to see more from you in the future

the most common team comps (whether in duos or trios) would've been a really useful metric to see. and their corresponding extraction/kill rate, but I'm sure that wouldn't be as nearly as easy to track down compared to the data we got.

Bro why you gotta bring up the double dipping and all that, people don't gotta know. 10/10 video, very good, much enjoyed. Maybe darkmode charts tho

I feel like ungeared Rogue and Wizard could use a buff to starting equipment. I'd like to not have to stab someone about 10 times when I get the drop on them just for them not to die, turn around and 1shot me, then die of poison..

Wizard needs a significant starting gear buff, invisibility needs to go back to 4 seconds but reduce the speed boost fomr 10% to 5%, and reduce all buff times when given to other players

Cleric is very useful to have in HR, some even refuse to play HR without a Cleric cause the amount of utility and healing he provides is insane. Damage boost, instant protection, etc. Fighting a team with a cleric that keeps his team alive is impossible to win against unless you kill the cleric first.

As a highroller grinder, a point I think you missed about wizard is the lack of counter-play against extremely geared/skilled ones, especially on classes with subpar magic resist. The reason barb/wiz/cleric was so dominant is because barb was the only class really capable of facetanking literally any 2 spells from a geared/skilled wizard and not drop dead immediately. Making barb/wiz/cleric it's own counter. Extremely unhealthy for the game, we'll see what adjustments they make. Here's hoping for a highroller goblin cave, I'm sick of the castle for now!

Very nice analysis, thank you for compiling additional data. Being able to conclude that it's hard to conclude is one of the hardest part of statistics, and you were very careful to present everything with a grain of salt. thanks a lot!!

Rogues are kinda like loot pinatas at the moment, they've got all the speed to get around quickly looting the place but not many of the tools to actually keep their loot.

Great analysis, loved this vid! Looking forward to more D&D content from you

Excellent work sir, both in you data analysis, your extra digging, and the presentation. Have my like! This would be a very interesting video for the devs to look at. With great depth, while still being as much unbiased as possible. On a personnel opinion, I think one of the reason why wizard is considered so strong, because how unfair fighting a good wizard feels like. A fully geared wizard in the hands of a wizard main is extremely mobile and pack a serious punch. A solo wizard main can wipe entire lobbies. it rolls over teams of 3 as a solo within a minute or 2. Wizard is limited by their number of spells, and, by extension, have to win the fight against the clock. When they go in, they go blastin'! They will either completely wipe a team in seconds, do a mistake and get slaughtered immediately, or fail to kill everyone run for their life and come back later with full force again. So, their perceived strength is much higher than their actual strength due to them having an immense impact when they engage a fight. But this is just my opinion. A wizard with godlike stats, with fast incantation speed, fast movement speed and high damage is not the same class as a default gear wizard. Even without the damage bonus, having a few stat buff in Will and Knowledge and a tome already feels like being able to do things a default wizard can not even dream about doing.

if we were to isolate the barbarians only using the felling axe I'm pretty sure that the data will show something mad

It's infuriating to play a wizard, get rolled consistently, then see everyone say wizards should be nerfed because of a few situational chess masters. I'm so glad data is available because words about this will always be met with "get guud noob" leaving the class abandoned and unplayable. Next playtest, I will be making a barb with the sole intention of using him to gear my wizard.

1:38 RIS does matter for cleric and wizard, including in sell count. They can't loot or open chests as quickly as their teammates and you can't assume that every cleric/wizard is in a party where loot is divided equally instead of first come first serve. Some players even loot an enemy another teammate has killed all by themselves, focusing singlemindly on looting enemies with high loot value as soon as they drop or even looting during combat, this means that frontliners and players with a higher RIS have an advantage over looting. Excluding RIS from the equation only makes sense for goblin caves, or if 100% or a significant portion of the playerbase divided loot equally, when it's really only a percentage of the good players that do that. There are also other metrics, for example fighters being able to use almost anything increases the chances that even in a gear-sharing team, they're incentivized more to pick up gear that they might use later, only to sell it when they need the space or gold. There is wizard meditation, ranger reload and cleric heal after fights that might have an impact on overall sell count too. So half of the classes should have some players that have a legitimate distraction post battle, while the other half are more likely to focus on looting immediately post battle. About Wizard, even though they are "only" place 2nd on the pvp leaderboard, it's important to distinguish that they are also a support class, like Cleric. So for example in Barb-Wizard-Cleric comp they are both getting a lot of kills and buffing the Barb, pushing the Barb further up above the leaderboard above them at a small sacrifice to their own kill potential. This means they have even more pvp potential in a group than the stats dictate, both because they are buffing the only class "higher" than them along the pvp board and that they still rack up a significant portion of pvp kills by themselves. I would simply say, Wizard has a high skill and gear ceiling, default Wizard is terrible but Wizard with top tier gear can be insane. I think a lot of this comes down to how fireball and zap scale, and that's not even considering Wizard's support spells like haste and ignite. You pick up on this at the end of the video, but the final summary is mixed for me for this reason. It says that Wizard underperforms and yet Cleric is difficult to measure, however Wizard still outperforms Clerics stats. Yet they can both perform as support classes and they both have strong pve (MM and Q skill). Also saying that Cleric's usual role isn't PVP isn't necessarily true, without the statistics to back up that most Clerics focus solely on support and Wizards solely on offense. A Wizard for example can both be used offensively and in a support basis, but so can Cleric. Clerics have the combination of magic in the case of either of their Q skills, a physical attack and plate armor. There isn't really a reason to consider Cleric support only or support in a different sense to Wizard. In fact a Cleric can in theory stack both high PDR(one meta) and magic damage(another meta) in the form of Judgement at the same time, being a class that can really perform at high levels in two of the top metas at the same time, and they also have some of the best sustain in the game. Clerics also have the highest Will, the second highest MR(next to Barb) and thus the highest Debuff Duration, combined with a perk that halves Debuffs, giving them the best available protection against some of the killers at high tier play which are DoTs from magic damage stacked Wizard spells & Rogue, it's still the highest protection even if most top tier mechanics still revolve around one/two shots currently. Clerics have both melee and ranged pvp capability.

Great video, loved not only the analysis on the data, but also the discussion on the results as well, kind of wrapped everything up perfectly into one video. Subscribed, hope you keep making more great videos like this!

Playing a wizard solo with no gear is impossible. You would think that the goblin caves would be alright, but the layout makes it too easy to dodge spells and close the distance. Even if you get significantly better at using spells, the base movement speed, interaction speed, spellcasting speed, and damage make a base wizard useless. It's far too difficult to get a wizard off the ground, And I hope that changes because wizards are really fun.

What I think might be "wrong" about the Wizards numbers (its atleast for me and my friendgroup I played with the case): Me and my friends didnt want to "learn Wizard" in the playtest becasue the time is so short. We all plan to try Wizard once the game actually releases to early access and we can play pretty much daily and dont have 1 1/2 month of breaks after a 1 1/2 week of playtest where you just got the hang of Wizard on the second to last day. So I did like 10-15 games at max on Wizard while I did only 1 kill and 0 extracts last playtest before I said "lets wait till early access with that".

one important thing I think plays into wizards pick rate, is his ability to deal with PvE. I is more than capable, but it feels tedious to be meditating, and having to be efficiently spell manage to make sure if you get caught out by players, you are still ready for a fight.

I'm an analyst IRL and this video was done very well, backed with numbers, great pace to information and presentation. Subbed. If you don't do something like this for a living you should think about it. Regarding the analysis and questions for the wizard's inconsistencies, I think you may have understated the impact of the wiz being integral to the "buff the barb" strategy, so some of the wizard's strength is going to be reflected as strength in the barbarian's statistics. IMO, the wizard's buff spells (haste and invis) are actually even more impactful as a barb then the cleric's, though heals are always going to be strong. Wizard spells directly impact barb's mobility and attack speed, which are his hard weaknesses. In general, I don't think the wiz needs more spell capacity nerfs, I think they need to look at maybe putting in some kind of duration/strength penalty for casting buffs on teammates instead of yourself. So if you cast haste on your barb it may only be 75% as strong or last 75% as long, something like that.

As the last day was coming to an end, I found myself playing wizard because I was enjoying it the most, while it probably being my worst class to pilot. Awesome video!

Super useful info, glad to see people actually analyzing the data and trying to make useful conclusions based on facts rather than just emotional arguments on what "feels bad"

BTW Fighter does really well because of free healing, a players first few games might not have potions and bandages etc

Wizard stats are just a skill issue and I don't have a problem with that. There should be classes in the game with a high skill ceiling that players can master. Not every class needs to be baby proof like barb/ranger. Barb=get buffed, run in, swing for head. Ranger=shoot head run away shoot head again GG. Great video

I remember getting ratio'd and laughed at when I said barb was ridiculously powerful in the 3rd play test.

Part of the reason why there may be less loter for wizard is this after a fight i have to sit and mediate to get spell slots back while my team loots. To be fair my team would give me wizard specific stuff but i got few gold things out

wizard is the spy of TF2, 90% of everyone play him wrong, 9% play him well, and 1% play him great

I think part of Wizards problem is the strange scaling between different spells and magic damage. It is hidden info so only experienced people know that fireball, magic missiles, and spark can do insane damage if you are geared.

Something to keep in mind is that Wizards are not only fairly strong in pvp, but ALSO bring strong buffs to a team. So a strong barb, buffed up by a cleric, may now go invisible and have haste from the wizard. Meanwhile, if the enemies try to push the wizard, he can still hold his own against them using offensive magic. Cleric really only has judgement as an offensive tool. (?) I'm thinking the reason Wizard is a bit lower on the kills and gold extracted merit is (maybe?) because Wizards have slow interaction speed, disallowing them from looting as fast as their teammates, often have to meditate to regain spells while their teammates loot, and sometimes spend fights simply buffing the stronger frontline unit instead of fighting. Wizard is in a weird place where it falls between a strong pure dps class and a strong buffing class. Also, wizard's high skill-ceiling make it harder to perform, which really is a good thing as it rewards skilled players. Edit: My general overview/conclusion of playtest 4 was that wizard and cleric aren't necessarily very strong, but moreso their buffs are too strong. I feel that nerfing barb was the wrong choice, as it makes default (no buffs from cleric or wizard) much weaker to the point that you REQUIRE cleric and wizard buffs to make barb viable at all. I saw this in playtest 5. My teammate I duo with would typically run barb while I was cleric. We could, with some degree of skill, out perform most teams of 3, and absolutely smashed through any teams of 2 in playtest 4. In playtest 5, however, we were barely able to win 2v2s, and that was with an excess of spell casting from my part. I would typically burn twice as many heals as I did in playtest 4 just to support my barb in a 2 player fight. We were rarely able to win 2v3s as the Barb nerf was just really harmful to a barb with a lack of gear. Perhaps barb is performing as intended in HR, but we haven't (as far as I know) seen the playtest 5 statistics.

I mained rogue last play test but I dipped into wizard play toward the end and damn I was having a blast

The music though. Baked into my subconscious via childhood

As a cleric using the common gear you could buy from the shop, I managed to solo charge and kill a barb, fighter, and ranger that were decked out with purple gear XD Alcohol is very strong and knowing when to back off to buff/heal yourself is important.

This video makes me want to hit "Yes" to every game that asks me if I would like to share my gameplay information to help improve the game

I played 'Frager' a lot in CS:GO. In terms of aim, and PvP. I was usually at the bottom of the leaderboard. The tradeoff is I was great at planting the bomb, getting clutch defuse times, and distracting the enemy enough for the time to run out. I was great at placing smokes, and overall my frags did a lot of damage. Making my assists soar. I was often kicked, and verbally assaulted in games. I would most likely be playing Cleric if I played this game. The under appreciated class that is the crux behind a win, or loss. The class no one wants to play. The class that doesn't have a high damage ratio, or a high K/D. And the class that people will denigrate you for, even if you were one of the reasons why the team won. #RespectCleric

This was awesome, thank you!

We love dork and dorker data analysts, you earned my sub!

this was so well done..subbed

Stellar video and analysis! I do wish, however, that you'd stuck with a consistent color code for the classes on your graphs. Subbed, looking forward to future uploads!

Incredible and digestible insight! Thanks

this video highlights a problem with the wizard class. its too difficult to use for the majority of the player base while also being completely broken in the right hands. i think the wizard doesn't need nerfs but rather a complete rework of abilities and controls. a way for the average player to be better with the class would leave room for smaller nerfs to spells like ignite or haste. of course you could always reduce the spells buff numbers when cast on other targets

ranger is sleeper op the man gets 3 biscuits to insta heal him- insane

Great job here! Thanks for the video!

I know it's a little late, but if you do something like this again try to keep the class colors consistent between charts

I like your data analysis a lot. It's really nice to see someone summarize stuff like this. I do have a few requests or advice though, you can take it or leave it. You're doing good, but improvement can be key. 1. Your graphs are good. You pick the right ones for each overview. But. Your colors and names move around from time to time and it makes it confusing to figure out which one is which class. 2. We can see your excel in the background. To me this is disturbing, to others it might be fine. A neat trick for hiding this is coloring out excel with white fill, so the little squares aren't visible. I believe the wizard ordeal points towards a "difficult to master" scenario like in other games, where the possible use of the class can reach very high limits, but the baseline of figuring the class out is very difficult.

beautiful write up

Awesome analysis. Well done sir

Honestly, what this told me more than anything was that DaD is extremely balanced generally. The real issue seems to be who can abuse gear rolled stats the most. I would even argue that Barb isn't insanely strong because I do believe that their success rate is heavily effected by the current meta. Thank you for the analysis, it was great.

It seems like wizard needs to be buffed a bit when it comes to low tier loot, while fighter needs to be buffed a bit with high tier, at least going off high roller stats.

You're missing a big key of high-roller/top #200 barb gameplay at 13:20 It's more the fact that Barbarians learned that their skills + perks + cleric buffs and wizard buffs can all apply to fransica axes that they can throw faster then a ranger can shoot. Just absolutely insane amounts of ranged damage + tankiness + free magic resist to counter wizards/clerics. The reason ranger isn't the top class in kills is because of meta too 13:50 They don't get a large increase in damage and kill potential when combo'd with cleric/wizard. The buffs just aren't as effective on them as a Wizard or Barbarian. You can't invis, haste, ignite, divine strike, protection on a Ranger and have them run in to clean up like you can on a wizard or Barbarian. They need good situations to claim kills. A lot of people can escape being killed by rangers as well. Where as a barbarian buff ball is very very unlikely to be escaped alive. Barbs have buffs from wiz/cleric + the massive slow on throwing axes. I think adding the total kills of surving team mates up at the end of a run and dividing it across your surving team would paint a much better picture at the performance of certain classes on the leaderboard. You can go to Insane Zeno's youtube channel and look at the leaderboard position of his teammates as well and see this. Lindstrom topped Ranger PvE boss kills in high roller because his team was giving him the last hits. This kind of stuff skews the data and makes it hard to extrapolate anything from it. Wizard is difficult to play. Lots of downtime meditating or campfiring so you can't collect as much loot, which makes it difficult to get geared. It's the only class you can kill yourself with lol. You have low interaction speed, abysmal mob killing speed when not using spells to save on downtime, very vulnerable to rangers, and very trash base gear. Upgrading to a white spell book completely changes the game for wizard. Access to knowledgable teammates also completely changes the game for wizard. They help you get good gear, share loot, clear mobs easily, set campfires for you and more. So it makes sense why wizard looks so abysmal in the grand scheme of things and so good in high roller.

I've spent past play test as 1/3 barbarian, 1/3 cleric and 1/3 ranger of total time played. Mostly in gobcaves. Rocking the white gear ONLY. And I can say, that based on my experience it is absolutely easier to play as ranger, than other two classes. Ranger survives, is good in PvP AND PvE, light on foot and interaction speed. It was the most successful for me. Then, surprisingly, was the cleric. I was dead like 2 or 3 times in PvP, but most runs the people were either killed in PvE or we were just not meeting each other and it was easy and calm rides most of the time with the sheer survivability of cleric and his performance in PvE. And lastly, the barbarian. I can say that it was the EASIEST it can get in terms of damage output. Even in the starter gear. Most of PvE encounters are over in two-three hits to the head, the fear you can put on enemies is also gives you a lot of time to just brute force yourself through, BUT! Even with the damage output in both PvP and PvE I can say that it was the HARDEST for me to get out of the caves. The barbarian has a lot of damage, but he is just a glass cannon in solo. Even if I was able to get out of the caves, the loot I sold was not enough to provide me with enough consumables and thus it was always a coinflip. By the way, in most of the PvP fight I had as barbarian the fighters almost always devastate me because of their shield and were just able to outlast me. Those games were all with the starter/white gear, I am not a pro or anything, just your average player, and based on my experience I can say that barbarian is incredibly strong, but fragile in the solo runs. Anyone who can keep him at bay or just to tank him will win. Cleric is the easiest to get in and get out and just to accumulate your wealth, while the ranger is THE BEST allrounder, with the survivability, damage and speed all on top. With the proper ambush I was able to kill people in ALL BLUES with my starter gear as ranger. Thus, I'd say your assumption of the game's balance about those classes are right. Barbarian will absolutely SHINE when in a proper team composition and supported by cleric, but going in solo is a coinflip you don't want to take. And as an opposite, the ranger is the BEST CLASS to take in as solo and the best allrounder in general. Can't say anything about wizard since I hate those pointy hat bastards and not played as one. The inquisition will burn them all.

tons of people play wizard once or twice, kill themselves with a fireball then dump the class, which is why sell rate is so abysmal. wizard is by far better than ranger once people got 5-10 hours into him

this channel has a long way to go. Save my words. Keep the good content

dude ! this has to be the best video about DnD so far ! very informative , thank you alot for your hard work !

amazing video, hope to see more from you in the future

Der Error Rate is so high in this because every PLayer in each class has not the same amout of Skill.

great data collection analysis! I agree we do need time for the meta's to seep in and people who play for fun, optimal and/or pro strats and see what comes of it. That said, I also feel wizard isn't played as much due to their solo potential. Every class can handle most mobs decently well, but wizards are the one class with a decent down time and recharge rate. Cleric has decent solo capability compared to wizard on attacks and healing, as well as the fact clerics can support more efficiently. I think wizards have a baggage like feel to not be played unless the focus is pvp surviving which is in HR. Other than that using wizard sucks for interacting, exploring, solo-pvp, soloing adventuring, etc. Where cleric is fine in both solo and group cases. With that said, I like where all classes are, if anything, fighter could be buffed with more speed duration or movement speed for comparison to barb situations, rogue could have loot boosters, cleric could have a little more fight options solo since they are slow (maybe a defense breaker) and wizard could have a 10 usage spell that decays only monsters dmg in a 15 second period till death with a fast recharge time.

9:33 Dunno if you can say classes are "performing horribly" in goblin caves from this data. I'd say that looking at player kills in goblin caves isn't a great measurement of performance, because many people in goblin caves are explicitly not trying to kill other players. They are there to scrounge up some money, either at a low level or in general, and are either being friendly with other players or just avoiding them as much as possible. Speaking for myself, much of my time in last playtest was spent in goblin caves raising each class from level 1 to level 20 before taking them elsewhere, and avoiding pvp as much as possible during this time. In this environment, items sold or number of escapes seem more significant.

Goblin Cave data should be completely ignored. IMO Goblin Cave was HEAVILY skewed to certain classes. I was more comfortable 1vs3ing in the regular dungeon than going into goblin cave depending on the class i was playing.

Wizard becomes a monster with the right stat rolls, they scale with gear the best out of all classes. On the flipside an inexperienced wizard with no gear is extremely weak Stacking additional magic damage effects not only the spell damage but the damage on the DoT of the spells (fireball burn, zap tick, ignite ticks)

i wish that they had used consistent colors for the classes in every chart

The 1 thing worth noting is that wizard has MUCH higher skill ceiling and floor, what best wizards are doing right now, will be what an average wizard will look like eventually. So while there is a lot room for improvement for wizard players, there isnt much to improve upon other classes, at least in comparison. I honest to god expect wizard to be nerfed again, maybe not next playtest, but down the line, when average wizard population gets better at the class and they start using their kit as its ment to be used. What I wish we had as a data, is performance at class level, and performance at how much hour players have on the class. Similar data exists in league and it often shows that a class that is difficult to play might seem weak, but if played by someone that put in the hours, is in fact overperforming.

Cleric getting a buff sounds good to me

really dig the mystery dungeon music

I think Fighters could be pushed more toward generalist like Ranger but with a melee leaning. Instead of trying to compete with Barbarian they could carve out a different place in a team.

As a guy that has dropped almost 200 hours into the game and playtests as wiz this playtest hurt alot and just wasn't as fun as the rest of them. making the glass cannon of the group become so heavily gear reliant when they have some of the worst interaction speed made it rough as all get out. I only dropped 65 hours this last playtest and really it was because we already started with a nerf (which i was okay with and was ready to try and keep making it work) but the continued nerfs through out the playtest was just demoralizing and making me think "why even play this class if ranger is just better" and as i kept playing the only way i was able to get any solid amount of escapes was with just juiced gear when last playtest i could feel at least confident in some whites and greens and a couple purples. It honestly just came down to being demoralizing playing a high skill class when i constantly had to sweat and wear the best gear to be able to even do damage and would just die so easily to almost any other class. I feel the main reason everyone complains about wizard as just a sole class (just wizard) is because they see some youtube vids of players in just amazing gear that also play games for a living and proceed to just auto assume that its busted but....when you lose your gear set to a green long bow out of no where in purples or are unable to out run a barb that just one taps you or kills you with throwing axes that slow so hard you really feel like a old wizard.....it just a not a feel good moment when its already hard and expensive to find gear for the class. I even went around trying to get some advice from the community and even reaching out to sdf about it who said he doesn't respond to personal dms trying to ask about how they were making wizard work and all i got was to "wear good gear" which i already was and to use the ignite dagger build that apollo uses (btw sdf did add and said they will be changing how ignite works so be ready for that spell blades). I don't want to have it were the offensive spell casters only option now is to just wear the best of the best gear or just follow the meta of using a spell that just scales very well and just makes you a more lethal rogue but hey if the community just wants a completely non magic based combat system and for them to just be not good then im glad i got some good memories with them in the earlier play tests. in my opinion they need to increase the base percentages of the damage and armor rating and just lower the scaling and it would preform a lot better in the beginning to the mid along with still being strong in the later parts of the game such as high roller and this is honestly just copium but just give us oue spell slots back so the game isnt a sitting around simulator even for 10 spell. If you made it this far thank you for reading this and I hope your day is gnarly

A really well done and presented analysis. I think you might be onto something with the synergy between wizard and barb at high levels as I have seen some really powerful high level plays with that combo. Like you said, more data would be needed to really nail down solid conclusions. Also really nice to see statistical confirmation that a lot of people were struggling in goblin caves and to get their wizards off the ground. I expected to see rangers in a similar position due to their lack of melee with their default kit, but I guess having a really solid healing potential might've softened the edges on that kit.

This is an incredibly useful, revealing and brilliant video. I read through Ironmace's data each time it's released, but because it was raw data and very unrefined I honestly didn't know what to make of it all or what it said about the current game. Thanks for taking the time to analyze the data so thoroughly and make this video about it! I really hope the Devs watch it as well and/or find this somehow. Can anyone send them a link?!

My experince was very harsh having to learn the game for the first time as a solo rogue. only managed to have enough for items towards the end of the playtest. It was the must fun I've had in a long time

I think they just need to make casting spells less cumbersome. Allow me to bind individual spells to keybinds rather than having to use a fucking wheel in a game where wherever you aim your vision controls whether or not you're dodging shots... If spellcasting controlled better, average players levels would be raised. And it wouldn't affect top players at all, because it's not a balance change.

the problem with wizard is, even though he is hard for an average player, he is still very strong if used in a right way. If, based on those stats, devs buff wizard a lot, it will be a disaster since more skilled wizards will be dominating

The thing about wizards is that they can be the kill carry power house or they can just sit back and be the buffer. I see more wizards give their flaming weapon invisibility and haste to their teammates most of the time their barbarian than I see them buffing themselves for kills.

Wizards are the reason fighter under performs in high roller.

I think problem with wizards is limited spells. With low level gear you need to hit more spells to kill somethink. Ranger or barbarian needs to make more attacks too but they are not limited. As new wizard you use most of your spells fast to kill anythink and with wizard dificulty it makes them bad without gear. Example: Geared- 2 fireballs to kill, has 3 left, can kill with fireballs again No gear- 3 fireballs to kill, has 2 left, can't kill with fireballs again

a bit late but as a ranger I always target Clerics and Wizards first (although I target Clerics more if a team has both) , could be a reason for their lower survivability/extraction %'s. Im sure other players do the same, as its a typical strat to cut off support from the team. nevertheless great analysis. I just worry how hard the new ranger quiver will damage the class.

sick Video my dude, i think its kinda good balanced for a game thats not even out yet

While i like wizards higher skill ceiling i think that the dmg scaling really needs to be compressed a well as the cast speed since it's alot more noticeable compared to the somthing like attack speed on other classes i think this i likely one of the bigger factors in there seemingly exponential power increase with better gear as being able to get the haste+invis off before a melee class can reach you is alot harder at base casting speed.

The stats can deceive a little. Most comps have Wizard running support and buffing the front line. It makes sense that barb and fighter get the most kills as they're the ones in front receiving the buffs and heals. Wizard is also the highest skill requirement to use effectively. Friendly fire being part of the game only increases that difficulty. Barb and Fighter on the other hand are very simple to pick up and be successful. I think it's a slippery slope to buff Wizard off this data. The impact of the Wizard buffs cannot be extrapolated and Haste has to be the strongest buff in the game.

I wanted to like wizard but he's just pathetic he can't attack as often as the ranger, hits like a wet noodle, needs to meditate constantly, can't do anything useful when he runs out of spells the only upside is his support spells are useful for buffing up your group barb/figther

Doing the Lord's work with this content brother.

IRONMACE might want to recruit you after this vid.

iron mace needs to watch this video tbh

great vid, great analysis

Wizard is gear dependent and you have to know what spells to use. Also you can use aimbot and just spam magic missile headshots and that kills anybody with 1 to 2 casts without either side having gear.

So I've gone over this pretty thoroughly and I think there's a big point that you may be missing about Wizard and why they perform so much differently outside of top 200 envirnoments. The data we're looking at is missing a massive amount of information about how each class performs in PvE. If you've played as a wizard, you're probably aware that wizards suck at PvE and that they are probably the absolute worst by a huge margin outside of having absolutely stacked gear. There is no information released about which classes die the most to PvE mobs (or traps), and the fact that wizards must sit to regain spells leaves them far less time to clear rooms and loot items when compared to everyone else. Literally everyone other than wizard does not have to expend resources in any meaningful way for PvE encounters, and it's a bit crazy that barb goes around 2 shotting basically every PvE mob while ALSO having the most health of any class in the game. In addition to lacking the ability to deal with mobs and loot effectively while maintaining readiness for PvP encounters, wizard is also by far the least durable class. In goblin caves, taking two hits from any poisoned weapon means that you just die on the spot, and this it is not uncommon to die from a single attack from a red PvE mob if they land a headshot on you. Deaths to PvE mobs (and traps) are completely glossed over by the information that has been released, and so it seems not unlikely that this is where the difference between wizard and the other classes lies. It is very likely that for the top 200 players where wizards are really shining, it is reasonable to believe that their two teammates are dealing with virtually all of the pve encounters for them. Rangers, Clerics, and especially Barbarians are just in a completely different ballpark when compared to wizard when the PvE aspect of the game is considered. Additionally, I think it's relatively obvious to say that on top of the massive pve disadvantage experienced by wizard, it also has a far higher skill floor and ceiling which would hurt it statistically. My conclusion is that if this were purely a BR game where enemy mobs were not an obstacle, wizard would be substantially more in line across different skill levels and game modes.

Wizard is not average you can't balance a game with only statistics, If you balance a game around the performance of the average player then skilled players will crush lobbies with OP builds and strategies.

super informative!

Very very good video, very informative. If you keep this quality and promote yourself in the official discord, I think this kind of content isn´t explored yet.

Every nerf wizard has received thus far effects ungeared/low skill players way more than good ones. Less spells doesn’t matter when you 2 shot people.

great video.

good deep dive

Wizards overperform in friendly fire damage.

Overall video was pretty good and I'm glad you tackled the stats with some competency on addressing the limitations of the data . . . that being said, I think there's a lot data that was not contextualized well, especially pertaining to Wizard and Barbarian (at least in my opinion). Take what you asked about Wizard, for example. Why is Wizard's data so inconsistent with their perceived power level in All Games? This question is borne of misunderstanding how to contextualize the data about Wizard, primarily because you and others keep comparing Wizard to Barbarian, when you should actually be comparing Wizard to Cleric. When viewing Wizard as plainly a DPS class, they seem like they under-perform . . . but you don't claim that Clerics are underperforming, don't you? No, when we discuss Cleric we contextualize the data by saying that Cleric has extenuating circumstances that characterize the data we're seeing- and the same is true for Wizard if you think about it carefully. Wizard, especially at lower skill levels and lower gear levels (read as: All Games category) is actually a support class, similar to Cleric more than they would be similar to Barbarian and Ranger. Its much easier for Wizards at lower skill and gear levels to simply buff their Barbarian with their Cleric and set him loose upon the dungeon to rack up the kills and loot for the team. Wizard has trouble at these levels acting offensively because their starter junk gear is hot garbage casting speed and damage wise- but if you're casting buffs pre-emptively to taking a room by letting your Barbarian off their leash then you neither of those things really have an effect on your strategy. This is where the "inconsistency" in the data comes in- because that inconsistency is perfectly consistent. Look again at the difference in Kill per Game ratio. Once more, you're comparing Wizard to Barbarian, but what if you compare each class to themselves? Let's lay it out visually: Barbarian (All Games) 1.78 -> 1.98 (High Roller) Fighter (All Games) 1.61 -> 1.24 (High Roller) Ranger (All Games) 1.41 -> 1.81 (High Roller) Rogue (All Games) 1.26 -> 1.15 (High Roller) Wizard (All Games) .67 -> .1.30 (High Roller) Cleric (All Games) .61 -> .45 (High Roller) Are you seeing what I'm seeing? Because I'm seeing a busted class- but it's not Ranger or Barbarian. It's Wizard. Look at that difference. We aren't even talking about Top 200 where Wizard is ABOVE Ranger for 2nd place where the difference is even more insane- but something is defintiley wrong with Wizard- and it isn't that Wizard is weak. No other class matches that difference in performance into High Roller- although the drop off from Fighter and gains by Ranger are notable being about .2 away from the .63 difference in Wizard. Once more, if you contextualize this by looking at Wizard as a support class- especially seeing Clerics kills drop- you start to understand whats going on with Wizard. Wizard is decisively a strong class- arguably it STILL needs to be nerfed considering that if a class is still problematic and terrorizing lobbies in seemingly completely uncounterable ways with instant kill Zaps, Fireballs and Chain Lightnings- and thats AFTER you nerfed all of the classes' spells by 1-2 uses- the class is so strong that it is unbalanced by definition. Wizard is not a DPS class, but actually a support class like Cleric that has damage spells that are underwhelming with low gear and skill, so they suffer a bit at lower levels . . . but when played with higher gear and skill, the class is actually a Support Class and DPS Burst Mage hybrid that can simultaneously buff their Barbarian teammate while they buff themselves and shoot out 1-2 shot zaps while the Barbarian either 1 shots someone else or finishes and chases down the target you maimed for 100+ damage on a single spell cast (if not completely 100-0ing them, looking at you magic missile). Imagine how busted Cleric would be if they could not only bring efficient buff spells, heal, but could also deal massive AoE damage or 1-shot hitscan (in a game with no hitscan except for your magic spells LOL). Suddenly, most of Wizard's stats make sense in a plausible way. Wizards doing so badly at the low ends, especially Goblin caves, is due to no self-healing and their starter gear making them shitty vehicles for their own buffs, and early on without gear their damage spells are slow to cast and don't deal a lot of damage. Put Wizards into a group, especially with a decent vehicle for their buffs, and suddenly they improve a lot (while also significantly padding the stats of their teammates). Still, Wizard are likely to die and get less loot because they loot slower, have less health, and whenever a fight breaks out are liable to be focused because killing the Barbarians support casters is easier than killing the Barbarian themselves, not to mention without the constant stat roiding Barbarian becomes sluggish and much less likely to 1-shot you. High Roller shows an advanced intermediary period where Wizard players are on average much more skilled and much more geared and so Wizards improve MASSIVELY in a lot of their metrics. In comparison to themselves and Cleric as the other spellcasting class they have grown significantly more in comparison to their previous stats, and that makes sense, as scaling on Wizard spells along with better positioning and game knowledge allows the Wizard to not only survive, but to thrive in the dungeon as both support caster and deadly ranged combatant. There's a bunch of other things you could discuss, such as Fighters losing kills in High Roller from becoming a more team defense oriented playstyle- but I think Barbarian and Wizard were the main point of the video so I thought it would be more worthwhile to cover them specifically. For what it's worth, yes, I also think Barbarian is EXTREMELY inflated by Cleric and Wizard. I also think that generally there needs to be more about the inevtiable discussion not about the stats but the direction of the game's balance. Personally, I think the vast majority of players in a game like this should get heard on problems they are having at their skill level- but usually you don't want to balance the game on how people play a game suboptimally- at least not exclusively. Wizard could really use a second look at their scaling for an adjustment- but they should also get compensated with starter gear that isn't made of literal dogshit. Just a spellbook / crystal sword combo or dagger / orb combo for starting gear on Wizard would make them a lot less agonizing to play for new and curious players.

I feel like you are forgetting about wizards extreme utility with haste and invis which is why barb even can get so many kills

Are you responsible for the atrocious colour coding or the devs? 1:35 Why is Fighter light blue on the left chart but orange on the right one? Why is Barbarian orange on the left and purple on the right? Only Cleric and WIzard are assigned the same colour. This is such a mess to look at. Edit: 1:49 I guess the classes are always coloured based on their size in the respective chart, light blue being the largest and lavender the smallest. This is a war crime.

I personally love how wizard is performing, while I think it is very unhealthy for wizard to be a top 1% players viable only class I enjoy it a ton because I am the one running around 1 tapping anyone who isnt a barbarian with Zap or fireball direct hits. not to mention I got my chain lightning to hit for 100+ later into the playtest. Needless to say I had an amazing time with wizard

wizard barb and ranger needs a lot of fine tuning in the next playtest. Barb should be the highest priority, and ranger needs some tweaks to its dps. Wizard is kind of hard to balance, because they are still super strong, even after their spell capacity nerf, and yet they can be the strongest class in the game with gear, so they need to scale magic resist scaling so people can have some sort of defence mechanism vs them. Fighter and rouge need better perks.

The "wrong" goes with gear enchantment and rarity , might not be the class itself. zap and fireball as a ranged dmg scale too well with +magical dmg

4:17 "Top 200 Ghost KINK Slayer???"

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon music 🥰

First thing, u have to keep making vids like this cause they are an absolute banger. Secondly im barb since the start and finally ppl realize that barbs are op, i tried wizard and its hard with their situational requirments so i understand most will be struggling to play wiz. Fighter seems like a barb with less dmg and a shield, cleric is my saviour and ranger is my enemy cause they are ranged and consistent. Rogues are a mixed cause they are strong but a well timed headshot cause kill most rogues so high MMR players know how to beat rogues and wiz has invis so it makes sense for rogues to be less prevalent. Also rogues are more effective against the general public cause they are strong early game unlike wizard. I do think that the current game is a bit scuffed with barbs being too strong but don't take away their dmg cause they will be unplayable. Maybe make them weaker defensivly or unable to use heavy gear idk. I think the balancing is kinda fine with maybe some tone downs or buffs needed but it seems alr. Finally Ironmace gotta see this cause this vid is really informative but im sure they alr came to the same conculsion. Gonna wait for the meta to change in the next playtest o7

wizard is insanely good if your good at the game, and its totally insane tbh