Endgame, Magic Missile is actualy far more powerful than anything you do in melee with similar point investments.
Remember the way the spell scales, and how damage modifiers work.
I totally disagree with that. Let me crunch some numbers to prove it:
Magic Missile:Let's assume 100 int (+100% magic damage), rank 10 magic missile (4 projectiles/33 dmg), rank 5 destruction skill (+50% spell damage), activated rank 5 Way of the Battlemage (+50% magic damage).
You're looking at:
4*33*2*1.5*1.5=594 damage.
With a cooldown of 1s, that's
594 dps.
Melee:Let's assume 100 int (+100% magic damage), 30 str, 20 dex, rank 10 two-handed expertise (+95% weapon damage), activated rank 5 Way of the Battlemage (+50% magic damage), rank 5 death blow (+17% crit chance).
Let's take a basic lvl 25 2h sword with 85 average damage, 70% of which is magical, and a single 24 magical dmg enchantment.
You're looking at:
109*(.3*1.15+.7*2*1.5)*1.95=519.7 damage.
Let's take into account the crit damage.
7% base crit + 17% bonus from death blow, critical damage of 1.5*1.2 (thanks Greever for the formula :P):
519.7*(1+.24*1.5*1.2)=744.2 average damage
A 2h sword swing once every ~0.82 seconds, so that gives us a total of 744.2/0.82=
907.6 dps.
You'll notice the melee build uses a mid-level, poor quality sword (usually you'd add a few +24 magic damage enchantment), and we're just using regular swing dps.
A well equiped, skill using warrior will be doing a lot more than that.
So yes, melee is doing more damage :P
