1000x? realy?

my calculator says me -
Sal - +100/+600 vs Darco +100/+600 =
1 vs 3.

(Darco formation bonus +900)

Sal - +100/+600 vs Darco +100/+600 =
1 vs 3.

(Darco formation bonus +900)


Sal - +100/+600 vs Darco +100/+600 =
1 vs 8

(Darco formation bonus +2900)

Draco has limits that made me not even consider him as DPSer. Two, mainly. The first one is that he severely limits your formation to crusaders that boost his DPS instead of reducing it, and some of them are REALLY powerful crusaders (like roboturkey, or the President - the only one that can speed up farming, and therefore NEEDED in every single formation except when you try a hard objective). The second flaw, and this is a HUGE one, is that he is an "early" crusader. He reaches the 5000 levels cap way too soon. I had to switch my main DPSer from Sal to the Alien, even if she does much less DPS, just because with Sal I was reaching a wall while I was still instakilling monsters... until the level cap is removed/increased, Draco is unusable as a DPSer, like every other crusader that is not among the last ones.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like your biggest problem is that Rayna can't do as much DPS as Draco.

Rayna comes with a powerful healing ability without taking up the usual healer slot nor the Alchemy slot. She can stack ridiculous healing if you decide to use another healer, has a high crit bonus, and has one of the best offensive spells in the game. If she could do anywhere near as much damage as Draco, she would be completely overpowered since Draco has very little utility. Of course she does less damage than Draco -- she has extremely high utility.

As for the 5000 limit, if you're not to it yet then you simply don't realize how much it hurts him. Draco is utterly worthless or at least sub-optimal for many tier 3, tier 2, and even a few tier 1 objectives. There are even plenty that he doesn't reach 5000 in where he loses most advantage such as Lone Descent, Dual Descent, and Fox Only to name a few. I can tell you quite plainly that Draco will never be a good endgame DPS unless the 5000 limit is removed. He is very far from being overpowered in anything other than early game, and even then I don't think he's as powerful as you think. You can't use the best support crusaders with him without penalty and those penalties add up to make him only a little bit stronger. Yeah, he's still strong, but he's very far from 1000x strong. He doesn't even do 1/1000 dps as Nate in endgame because of the 5000 limit. If anything, the argument should be to remove the 5000 limit because that's where imbalance comes in.

We seem to be failing to communicate here, and I feel you didn't read my post before responding. Here's the summary:
1. I've done the math. I used Rayna as an example, because 1/23 of Draco's DPS is the closest I've ever gotten to matching him. This is *without* using Reginald's Royal Grail ability or the Princess. Other crusaders are even worse.
1b. Furthermore, if Rayna isn't supposed to be a good damager, why does she have a golden epic that increases her dps? And why does she do more damage than my other damagers who have similar equipment and more EP?
2. You mentioned that "You can't use the best support crusaders with him without penalty". Please elaborate. I've already pointed out that there are plenty of good supports that are either animals or royals, and a few small penalties does nothing to stop Draco from being totally overpowered. Note that these penalties are not a 50% reduction to his dps. They are a 50% reduction to the bonus, subtractively. That means if his bonus was already 600%, it only goes down to 550%, hardly noticable.
3. "loses most advantage such as Lone Descent, Dual Descent..." I know he doesn't work for every objective. If he worked for every objective, the game would be utterly broken. As it is, it's only mostly broken, because he still works for most objectives.
4. The reason why I'm ignoring the 5000 limit is because I've never hit it. I've been playing this game for a while, and the 5000 limit hasn't come into play, so I don't consider it 'early game'. And as you mention, the limit causes an imbalance (and reduces replayability), so I suspect some part of this mechanic may be changed before I ever reach the limit.

To summarize in the most simple way possible:
Ever since I got him, Draco has been the only viable damager. All damagers should be situational enough to be viable in the right formation. Make Draco conform to this by making sure he is only this powerful when other dps crusader's formation talents cannot be used effectively.

Nobody can suggest you a formation unless you specify which crusaders you have access to, what equipment they have, how many EPs, and even what your talents are (for example, crusaders that increase crit chance benefit DRAMATICALLY from a maxed-out Passive Criticals talent, and Rayna does have such a buff).

Anyway, if you don't reach 5k levels then Draco can be very strong, but don't assume automatically that he is overpowered, because for players with a lot more idols he is just trash. For me, even though I do have the GE for him, he is just a crusader that goes on missions, he has never been part of any formation (and he never will be, unless the level cap is reworked).

1. I showed you my numbers as well. In late game he is weaker than Sal, Nate, and even Merci. Just because it's not relevant to you *yet* doesn't mean it doesn't play a huge role in many, many objectives. If you want to ignore that then he's not that much stronger than most of my other DPS either, especially since they have fewer restrictions and penalties for using the best supports. For players without Sharing or good gear for King/Montana/Brogon, he's worse than Hermit. He is heavily dependent not just on his own gear but on the gear of others.
1b. I'm not saying Rayna isn't designed as a damage-dealer nor that she's perfectly balanced. I'm saying she's a different kind of damage dealer than Draco because of her utility. Rayna is made as a tank formation DPS not an insta-kill DPS like Draco. She can give ludicrous hp regen to powerful tanks such as Jack, allowing them to tank far more enemies without dying and in turn also activating extremely high DPS multipliers. Her crit allows you more clicking damage during said tanking as well. This playstyle is obviously not for everyone, but please keep in mind that critical clicks will do ludicrous damage if you have that part of the talent tree maxed out. In a good tanking+clicking formation, I think she could probably overcome that 1/23 gap you talked about but I have not tested it out. It would also depend on the gear you have on RoboTurkey because he shares a slot and also adds a lot to clicking formations.
2. To elaborate, picking the best support crusaders regardless of their type will lower his multiplier a bit. You can still get decent multipliers as you say, but it does lower the gap. With my crusaders and gear, my optimal non-Draco formation and my optimal Dracos formation are not that far apart (about 1.5-2x, certainly not 1000x), and the Draco formation is *only* stronger in early-mid game objectives without crusader restrictions. He also needs maxing sharing talent to reach his full potential unless you're sending him on missions and if you're doing that then you aren't using him as your main DPS. That's 43k idols that could have gone to another talent and likely why several event DPS have higher multipliers.
3. Ok, I'm glad you agree that he isn't the best for all objectives. You seem to be underestimating just how many objectives the 5000 limit hits though. There are several dozen objectives that he is sub-optimal/bad for. He may be quite good for early-midgame objectives with few restrictions, but his effectiveness falls swiftly outside of his niche.
4. Alright, sorry, I mis-spoke. You're mid-game, not early game. I very much hope they remove the limit asap, but I don't think it's fair to ignore it as long as it is there, and right now is is providing a heavy restriction on Draco to the point that most/all endgame players simply don't bother with him.
Formation: It's very hard to suggest a formation for you because your gear/ep/everything varies greatly from mine most likely. Right now my formation for the event is Sal or occasionally Nate as my main DPS with Billy, Panda, King, Artaxes, and Kaine as my main supports. I'm swapping the rest around all the time for missions as needed because this setup is all I need to reach the point where my crusaders are hitting 5000 and there's simply no reason to continue during a freeplay.

Just to be clear, I'm not arguing that he's not the best in his niche if you have a very good selection of gear and talents to buff him. I'm arguing that you are greatly over-estimating the size of his niche and how large his advantage is over similar crusaders. I also think you're not taking into account the fact that many players will lack the gear and talents needed to bring him up to 100% without hitting the 5000 wall first. Just because you were lucky with gear and/or bought chests doesn't mean everyone can come close to bringing him to 100% of his potential. There's *considerably* more effort involved to get him to max than, say, Hermit. It's the same way that Nat was the absolute best low-end DPS before if you have like 10ish specific epics but for the average player she was only a support crusader.

@Roku
Maybe you're right that I was rather lucky with equipment that buffs Draco. I suppose the other reason he seems OP is because he is always OP in free play formations (in my experience), where I spend a lot of time. Restrictions on formation size and available crusaders are the only things that seem to slow him down.

I still think that a small nerf, to bring him more in line with every other dpser, would be to have his formation abilities not count *himself* as both a royal crusader and an animal for his own abilities.

EDIT: Draco seems quite powerful in larger formations, where you can cram in all the royals and animals. I plan to compare him to Sal next time I play on a smaller formation.

@Teschio
There's a very good reason why I'm disregarding the level cap. As you said yourself, Draco is useless after level 5000. The fact is, ALL early dps crusaders will become useless after level 5000. So if Draco is OP before the cap, and useless after, rebalancing him only affects players like me who spend all their time below the level cap. This is the big picture I'm trying to look at. I'm not asking for a nerf because he's too op for me. I'm looking at the numbers and thinking that he is broken for players at my stage in the game (and irrelevant to players with sufficient idols). If I got a bit confrontational, it was because I was repeatedly told, by players who had more idols than me, that this problem was irrelevant to THEM.

And if anyone is being confrontational right now, it's you. I wanted to discuss this in a civil manner, but the opinion you provided was rather patronizing from the start. Insulting me doesn't help anyone, so let's try to move this conversation to Canadian levels.

I apologize as well, I let myself get frustrated.
To be totally honest, the main reason I started this thread was because I felt ripped off buying golden epics for damagers who will never do useful dps. I also want it to be more balanced because I want the game to be more interesting. Because Draco is so powerful (in my opinion), I definitely use him for almost every objective. I just wish I could use someone else effectively because the game is getting very repetative.

I didn't read this thread b/c it's like 10 essays long, but why would you want to nerf Draco? If he's good, then your life is easier. I don't see why you're complaining...