Also to note like Nwnghost said, Armor Penetration will now work on basically everything (if you find something it doesn't work on let me know). So that offsets many of these nerfs by upwards of 15~20%. Please give them a try and see. In most rotations the damage reduction was less than 25% overall, even in AoE situations. Single target got more competitive for players who ran that build. This means that other classes can now provide comparable damage in AoE situations and the Wizard can be more meaningful on Bosses where adds aren't a major issue. As well as a substantial PVP buff (Arpen, super important in PVP). The ability to decimate high armor targets is much more focused now.
Notice the bold font?
Practically all the bosses are difficult BECAUSE OF ADDS, with the few exceptions being MC and VT (during the first phase). The major issue ARE the adds. Bosses are giant hulks of HP; adds pose by far the biggest threat in dungeon runs.
Cleric:Marquis Elmdore - Current Main Wizard: Iamblichus Fighter: Anna the Titan Barbarian: Anann Valkyrja Ranger: Minerva Cory'phaia Warlock: Suri Coralyne Reid
Guild: She Looked Level 18. Alliance: Imperium
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vampirecavyMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 55Arc User
edited June 2014
I've got to say, the graphical changes to CW are... distracting and unnecessary, and probably bog down a LOT of people's machines. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in the class, but could we dial back the flashing lights to what they are on live? That's my number one problem with the preview shard version right now.
I think you made a mistake putting a cap of 8 to the singu.
It Will only cause stacking of more cws.
Please consider increasing it to something more reasonable (at least 10).
If you nerf our damage, at least allow us to control properly, please.
As for Eye Of The Storm, please come up with something different because with ICD of 90 seconds as well as a nerf to sudden storm, spellstorm is no longer a desirable paragon. The nerfing of the key heroic feature of the paragon simply ruins it in my eyes.
If you have to nerf it, I would rather have a reduced chance to get into EOTS than a ridiculously high cooldown.
Or perhaps keep the same functionality of live only with a smaller chance to crit when eye of the storm is active (say, 75% per each encounter?).
I am just bringing up ideas but anything is better than the current solution IMO.
My CW is an alt. My main is a DC. So the CW is not well equipt, blues and purples that are easily gotten when you hit 60. Does have purple weapon, 641 damage No set bonuses. Two boons from Sharandar and three boons from Dread Ring.
Daily: Ice Storm; Ice Dagger // Master: Ice Spike // Encounter: Shard; Sudden Storm; Steal Time
At Will: Magic Missile; Ray of Frost // Class: Evocation; Storm Spell
Learned Spellcaster bonus is not reflected in the Character Sheet. Same as on Live.
Assailant Force: Tried a build using this ability. I never saw it proc. It would be helpful if the tooltips included pertinent information to selecting the skill. For that matter, all abilities should include pertinent information to selecting the skill. This is an inconsistency overall with the tooltips that makes it impossible to intelligently select feats and abilities. Storm Spell is a great example of this. The tooltip does not provide you with any indication of how great the ability is, as the proc chance does not provide you with the magnitude of the effect. This is not friendly to the casual player.
Shard of the Endless Avalanche: On Live, I can destroy any trash mob in DR. No longer does. Match it with Slow Time…and then all trash dies. If it crits, then all trash dies.
Used to be that Chill Strike on Mastery would kill group of trash mobs or leave them with about 5% hp. On Test they have about 10-15% HP. By trash mobs, I mean the thayan servitors grouped in 3-4 or skeletons grouped the same. These are the lowest HP mobs in Dread Ring. If I crit, they all die. Otherwise, I either use another AE attack or mop up with magic missile.
Eye of the Storm: If you have no crit severity, you have less than 5% average increase. Statistically, you would get 6 seconds every 90 seconds of 100 crit. That is 75% more damage divided by 6/90 (or 15). There is your 5%. But wait, there is more. You would actually be critting normally over that 6 seconds, so you have to deduct your crit chance from that 5%. My crit chance is 34%, so Eye of the Storm would theoretically buff my damage by 3.3%. But since you only have a 6 second window every 90 seconds, there is a good chance your encounters will be on cooldown. Anyway, Eye of the Storm is not worth it now IMHO.
Companion seems to be doing a lot more damage. I use the Cleric Disciple and I notice them actually killing monsters now. Never noticed that on live. As they are only 15th companion level.
Dread Ring Synopsis: Yes it takes longer. One or two spells more. But that is literally seconds. Not a big impact to your soloing.
Sharandar Synopsis: Same as Dread Ring. You still own the content. Just a few seconds slower per encounter if you have equipment similar to mine. With better equipment, you should see almost no change.
IWD Synopsis: Did merchant caravan heroic encounter twice as solo. Was able to do it. But Shard got stuck on the terrain twice when I tried to cast it. It really does need to be a reliable skill now that it does not do as much damage.
Tried totem of auril and got owned with last wave. With practice I think I could do it. Definitely if I had a few k more GS.
Did not have any real trouble soloing the content in Ice Wind Dale. Dire Bears take a couple of rotations, normal bears one rotation. Yetis take longer cause I did not choke them. But still shorter than on my better equipt DC with damage loadout. My DC kills the Dire Bears in a similar amount of time, though. Basically 2 rotations.
Overall Opinion: Is it a damage nerf? Of course. Does it kill the game. Of course not. It does make you up your game and play better. You will probably have to tweak what skills you use. There likely will not be as much steam rolling of content and more actual skills needed. But I did not go into a Dungeon. So that part is speculation.
Overall Opinion: Is it a damage nerf? Of course. Does it kill the game. Of course not. It does make you up your game and play better. You will probably have to tweak what skills you use. There likely will not be as much steam rolling of content and more actual skills needed. But I did not go into a Dungeon. So that part is speculation.
Well technically you're not wrong but Thaum builds got destroyed or nearly destroyed (for some it may be damage nerf on feats or for people like me Assailing Force change is destroying this feat tree)
After Gentlemancrush said Oppressor is actually control tree I checked it out. Dunno if we have diffrent opinion on what's control (Oppressor is more of a de/buffer tree) or that was a joke but yea... Oppressor compared to (at least) Thaumaturge does not increase overall control, it just decreases dps.
Incoming - a wall of text! Not even sure how informative it is. So if anyone is not in the mood and will later criticize me for writing it this long - please take my advice and just skip my post. This post is something I had to write so I can go to sleep today relaxed. I intended to post it in the patch notes thread but it was closed to posting now. I wonder why. Have a good one all.
________________________________
The first sentence that someone hears entering NW website is from a video, and goes "for D&D fans by D&D fans" or something like that. Already there is a super important factor because D&D TT experience and MMO are two quite different things. Everyone knows what I am talking about - when you finish your dungeon in D&D and kill that evil drow priestess who transformed into a drider, you finally helped all those villages, the local lord will award you, you are a hero! In MMO you get a demonwrap cloak that is worth few thousands AD and are sad she didn't drop that Avatar of War chest piece you wanted to see drop again. So you queue for ToS again. In D&D world you don't care about your bard's lame damage in this dungeon, because she negotiated with the traders for better weapons, she healed the lord's daughter and earned the trust of many, etc etc. In MMO you want this dungeon to end ASAP, because you did it today twice already and will do it again in the evening. There is no traders or lord's daughter.
What I want to say is, that because of the game economy / game design (1) (example: no queue restrictions at all. You know, like 1 CN per week or day), everything functions the way it does.
Secondly, there is a design philosophy (2) fail here as well. One would be all the holes in SP / CN and so on and so on. Players started using the terrain to their advantage and repelling/pushing stuff into those holes and off the cliffs, so developers got tired of it and put invisible walls. How would it look in real D&D?
Dungeon master: to your right you see a group of skeletons patrolling near the edge. The abyss bellow seems to be very deep and deadly.
Player 1: I have this AoE skill that pushes stuff 3 squares back. I want to use it now.
Dungeon master: ****, I have spend 2 hours designing this part yesterday. Totally forgot about that skill of yours. Can we...like..forget about that abyss part now?
Players: you are lame.
This did happen and anyone with a decent level of tolerance and will to listen a bit and think could understand both sides and where they are coming from. It wasn't game breaking and really the smartest thing was to let it go. But now we're coming to a game breaking thing. It's because the game was made with 5 classes and only one was decently equipped to fight AoE. The tank class was made weaker than it should have been (personal opinion!) compared to other classes. So when your dungeon design is room after room after room filled with manymanymany adds, you can be **** sure people will use that one.
Now I am not just blindly defending CW. CW is way too strong in PVE content. I know. I am a very experienced CW main with ~110 days ingame playtime, that has 3-manned CN many times, soloed T2 stuff, 1-manned first 3 bosses of CN and so on. Who, if not me, is aware of the fact that no other class can pull of 120k shards every **** room. I am the one who saw that my GF/HR friends cant find the groups so I just took them with me when I could. Me and another CW friend didn't care who we ran with because we knew we can pull it of no matter who is in the group. . If we as 2CW+DC or 3CW can easily 3 man CN with no wipes or anything, and a 5 man group with no CW takes more time to complete CN than us (if they actually do it) it says waaaaaaaaaay more than enough, no matter how much I love the PVE throne that I am *oh so comfortably* sitting on. So YES, CW needs nerfs - some nerfs to our dmg kit, and (did I say this 7 times already ) different dungeon design philosophy. You guys were so close to achieve it, making MC and VT bosses single-target encounters, giving space to GWF/HR/TR there with their suitable kits for encounters like that. I saw a change of target cap on enforced threat for GFs, also a good direction to start going in, sadly after a year of this class being slightly weaker than it should have been (again - opinion.)
I have waited one day so that criticism I had here becomes constructive. I didn't want to just come and cry, no matter how much I felt like it yesterday lol. And it isn't only about CWs, I also cannot understand how will a GWF survive Draco hands now. If he goes sentinel for the *making unstoppable useful* feat - he won't deal good damage. I also feel bad that GF suffers from constant nerfing of the shared skills with his 1 word longer bro. I also feel bad that TR's big source of damage in PvP is a weapon enchant. There are indeed things to be done and I actually think they were going in that direction until these patch notes.
Because I understand how hard it is to balance a game like this, I actually did prepare a good bunch of suggestions. From a lot of number tweaks with CW feats and sets (plus a "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH EYE OF THE STORM AAAAARGHHHHHH" ) to game suggestions - thumbs up on single target bosses so expanding those ideas and seeing what else can you do on them, to a series of pvp ideas, some possibly not that hard to imagine and accomplish - changing the "just stand on the base forever and contest it" meta. (looking at you poor TRs who had to adopt and just be in stealth forever). Some are very radical ones - What if every spell for every class would deal different base damage to pvp and pve? I know it's very radical change, but think about it for just a moment. Wouldn't these 2 changes fix a good deal of issues? And before someone says there is no room for radical changes here, having CW deal 30% less damage from feats and main spell hitting for 60% less is a very radical change.
However, something has made me change my mind. Something happened that opened my eyes a bit and show me that there's more to it than just nerf us CN farmers who made little fortunes running CN 24/7. The thing basically showed that the intention indeed was to nerf just about everything with the only AoE class in the game. To make it unplayable. To nerf it recklessly.
A blue item for warlock just dropped for me on test shard.
First of all, it feels like you're playing in slomo with all these longer cast times. Certainly takes some getting used to.
Feats setup:
ACT against a medium HE:
It's only a couple minutes of testing, but so far Thaum doesn't feel as apocalyptic. Shard has been severely nerfed, but remains very useful for it's CC. Oppressive = impressive, Sudden Storm still Crits for 30k+ and Steal Time moves into the top spot for encounters. Very high damage and very good CC for PVE.
I hope the capstone from Thaum is bugged, because the proc rate is abysmal. In its current form it's easily the worst of all capstone feats.
In Mod 3 I was able to solo medium sized HEs to some extent and this hasn't changed although the damage is lower. Thaum still has CC + sufficient damage.
I tested for several hours with my hr friend (both ~16k perfect vorpal etc).
I tested every path opressor/thauma etc.
My dmg is really a joke with this nerf...
In my earlier post, i said, yeah its ok to cut the dps, but its really too much.
HR is so OP now, we killed mobs same time, and he is killing them so much faster, all of their skills etc get a boost.
PVE we loose too much dps/control and all is now slower that caps more of our damage.
To bring it to the point, we are screwed and i dont see a reason, why i should play my cw anymore.
No def, slow, low hp, no dmg, nerfed control etc. I cant see a reason to play this character anymore.
PVP
I made some duells with many guys...
Opressor is ok, you can freeze the target a lot, but i lost to gwfs and against a HR i have no chance at all, because he is healing so fast... He can stand without doing something and i cant kill him fast because of his healing skill.
Of course i can kill him if ice knive hits hard etc but in a real fight, i see no light for us cws.
Wow we can now freeze a guy and do low dmg and hope there is someone who is hitting the guy we freezed.
Overall very .
I understand the nerf, but they overdid it, its too much and wont help anyone, beside cws, other classes will have a problem too, if cws are nerfed like that. I hope they reconsider this issue. Really sorry and ... for the time i spend for this character.
Of course i am angry as many others too, because 1 nerf and all your efforts etc are screwed.
Greetings from Germany.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited June 2014
Sorry guys but the feedback threads have become way too messy with various speculations and back and forth discussions.
Now I am not infallable and pulled many things you may not agree with me grabbing. If you do then you can of course send me a PM about any specfic post and I will look into it but ideally we ask that you post your feedback in a direct format so it is easier for the deverlopers to read and understand your concerns in this specific situation.
If you want to discuss speculation or disagree with other posts rather than directing your feedback and experiences to the developers than please do so here. Thanks!
Off Topic Note: It seems this oddly enough has to be explained. Dungeons were never intended to be done by dragging as much as you can around and burn them all at once. The fact that could be done without a GF was the icing on top. Sadly many posts I grabbed were arguing based on the desire to continue that and that absolutely was not something that was ever intended to be done to begin with.
Can anyone help me understand the changes to Repel? Does it ignore CC immunity when placed in the Mastery Slot, or does it simply ignore Control Immune targets when you target a group that has a mix of control immune and non-control immune targets?
I hope it's the former. A CW spell that goes through control immunity would be very useful in PVP as there are far too many mechanics that ignore CC in PVP, making the CW a real challenge to play.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
Can anyone help me understand the changes to Repel? Does it ignore CC immunity when placed in the Mastery Slot, or does it simply ignore Control Immune targets when you target a group that has a mix of control immune and non-control immune targets?
It's the latter and is a buff for PvE although it might play a role in, say, IWD PvP.
Basically when you use repel it will prioritize controllable targets so it doesn't repel only four back instead of five when there were enough controllable targets to repel five.
But what about PVE? I think its quite a shame that changes are made that adversely affect pvers as a result of pvp.
I would be inclined to agree with you sir!
However I believe most of the changes made here were to address the "CW Stacking" issues in dungeons? So PvE has severely and very negatively effected PvP in this case. And I find it a shame that changes are being made that adversely affect PvPers as a result of PvE.
It should not be either way. Balance is very possible and feedback from both dedicated PvPers AND dedicated PvEers is necessary to accomplish that.
This mechanic is effecting PvP negatively, how would fixing, or changing this effect PvE? The devs need to hear ALL sides.
I've spent the majority of the day playing around with different CW specs on the preview shard and, I have to say, this is a nice round of buffs going out to CWs. I have a level 60 of each character and I plan on testing their buffs/nerfs in order that each class appears on my character select screen. CW was first, so here's what I have to say about it.
Feedback: Overall I first have to say that these buffs are some pretty serious business and I wanted to spell some things out for people not actually testing things and just crying "nerf" because things look bad on paper. The CW was the most seriously gimped class in PvP and has been for a long time. They have no tankability simply because tankability in this game = max life + deflect + LS/RG, three things CW sets are seriously lacking in, especially for PvP. This much is true and everyone knows it- CWs were support roles. Right now everyone is seeing "damage reduced" and "activation times/cooldowns increased" and crying about it- get over it. I've spent the majority of the morning testing different CW builds and DPS is just off the freakin' charts for some of the builds. CWs- you're getting a buff. Shut up about it and go figure it out. Take some initiative and plan/adjust your class build instead of waiting for someone to post an overrated build for it on a forum somewhere.
There are, however, a few things that I DO have to complain about and some things that I cannot stress enough should not be changed no matter how much people complain about it. Here goes:
Feedback: Powers
Conduit of Ice: This power has had its recharge time reduced to 13 seconds (down from 18 seconds). Leave the cooldown alone. This skill is typically tabbed and therefor gets a nice cooldown boost with the PvP set. In PvE it doesn't really matter since most mobs are dead before it wears off anyway.
Conduit of Ice: This power has had its damage reduced by roughly 33%. This damage nerf seems a bit excessive since Conduit will no longer grant bonus mitigation from the Thaumaturge final feat. The mitigation removal is nerf enough. Reducing it's damage even further makes it a poor first choice other than for quick chill stacks and even then it's almost not worth it.
Entangling Force: This power has had its total base damage reduced by about 10% overall. Again, I'm not understanding the damage nerf here. Since the AP gain fix from tabbed Entangling Force, this skill is rarely ever used. I think the damage on it should be left be when you consider the cooldown.
Icy Terrain: This power now ticks every 1 second (down from every 1.3 seconds). Give it a decent slow effect (maybe 25% or so) to keep enemies on it a little longer to do more damage AND to keep them from getting to the caster as fast. The immobilize is useless and only affects enemies in the area when cast. Typically, they're already close enough to attack so the immobilize is useless. Add slow- remove immobilize.
Ray of Enfeeblement: This power now takes 1.5 seconds to fire (up from .9 seconds).
Ray of Enfeeblement: This power has had its recharge time increased to 18 seconds (up from 14).
Ray of Enfeeblement: Allies no longer benefit from this debuff. I don't understand the changes to this power at all. Ray is only ever used for party debuffs. The increased activation leaves the caster "open" for longer and gives them a greater chance to be interrupted. The cooldown also makes no sense since it only affects one target. This power is primarily useless and only really ever used to help out the DPS classes.
Steal Time: This power has had its damage increased by roughly 65%.
Steal Time: This power has had its recharge time reduced to 18 seconds (down from 22 seconds). The damage boost seems a bit excessive. Maybe half the damage boost since shorter cooldowns = more casts which = more damage.
Shard of the Endless Avalanche: This power has had its base impact damage reduced by roughly 33%. WAY too excessive of a nerf. 15% or so would suffice since the push doesn't do much damage to begin with.
Shard of the Endless Avalanche: This power has had its explosion damage reduced by roughly 60%. I agree Shard is completely overpowered- I've had mine crit for over 30k per enemy on my own volition. But 60%? That's a HUGE nerf to the biggest damage dealer. I think maybe 30% would be a little more realistic.
Fanning the Flame: This power now takes 1.5 seconds to fire (up from .6 seconds). Double the activation time??? For a DoT skill??? It takes 1 second to cast and then my CW just stands there with here arms out like a scarecrow for a second AFTER it's cast. Maybe up to .98 would be good, but MORE than DOUBLE the initial cast time???
Fanning the Flame: This power has had its recharge time increased to 22 seconds (up from 15 seconds). I just don't understand why cooldowns and cast times are being increased. CW skills are largely telegraphed and easy as hell to dodge in PvP. Giving them longer activation times just makes it easier to dodge and then takes even longer to be recast (and probably dodged again).
Arcane Singularity: Activation time increased to 2 seconds (up from 1 second).
Arcane Singularity: Now can affect up to 8 targets (down from 15). Not really a big deal since most of the parties I roll with don't even use Sing. Oppressive Force is entirely too OP to give this daily a shot at being used anymore especially since throwing was ruined. All I can really say for this power is it's kind of like beating a dead horse.
Oppressive Force: This power has had its overall damage reduced by roughly 9%. I think more needs done with this power, honestly. No enemy limit, short bursts of damage before the final explosion, and a daze effect on top of that. Either nerf the first few pulses to do no damage or else give it a bigger damage reduction.
Eye of the Storm: This power now has an internal cooldown of 90 seconds. Base Duration increased to 4 seconds (up from 2). Duration increase per rank increased to 1 (up from .5). I think this is the best idea of all for several reasons. You can stack every stat but crit and still crit like crazy with it. With the right progressions and timing it can make for some OP burst damage with a lot of different skills. Finally, this class feature is probably the single reason why people choose Spellstorm over Fire. I do, however, disagree with the ICD. 90 seconds seems a bit excessive and will make this feature almost completely useless. Maybe give it an ICD of 30-45 seconds.
Feedback: Feats
Shatter Strike: *REWORK* When you freeze a target they are afflicted by Shattered for 10 seconds. Shattered foes have a chance when taking damage to be stunned for 5 seconds (1 second on players) and take up to 5% of their Max HP in damage (max 300% weapon damage). This effect consumes Shatter. Additionally, your control powers deal 100% of your weapon damage against control immune targets and Chill lasts 2.5 seconds longer. This feat, in general, needs a complete rework once again. With 2 ice wizards in the same party the damage output from this feat alone is completely insane. In open PvP another ice wizard and myself completely destroyed both a GWF and a GF in a matter of seconds.
Chaos Magic: *REWORK* Dealing Damage to targets has a chance to apply Chaos Magic to yourself. When you are affected by Chaos Magic you cannot be affected by a new Chaos Magic. You will be affected by Chaotic Growth, Chaotic Nexus, or Chaotic Fury.
Chaotic Growth - Heal yourself for 200% weapon damage every second for 10 seconds. 200% every second for 10 seconds??? Maybe make it heal for 1-2% of your max life every second for 10 seconds. Otherwise you're going to have unkillable CWs.
Chaotic Nexus - You gain 5% additional Armor Penetration and Critical Chance for 10 seconds.
Chaotic Fury - You gain gain 10% additional Power and Lifesteal for 10 seconds.
After reading these changes, I was pretty frustrated and disappointed (from my PvP only perspective). However, after considering the changes to other classes as well, it seems like GWF and HR, the two major issues in PvP atm, are also being dealt with in a somewhat similar manner. Regardless though, as a PvP CW, these changes seem somewhat game-breaking seeing as CW was already in a poor place to begin with. I'll give them a chance and hopefully find people for PvP on preview to test this stuff, but at this point I've just been taking a small break from neverwinter waiting to see what is going to happen with future updates. Overall, all the changes are in the right direction, but ultimately CW was in such a poor spot to begin with, that these changes, despite changes happening to other classes, I could see making CW pretty useless in PvP now. I may be better off just continuing to merch/do dailies until a perhaps new class is released with a "magic" based theme seeing as CW doesn't appear as if it could ever hold its own in PvP due to the necessary changes that need to happen for it to be in its place for PvP I'm just glad I didn't start investing too big into the new PvP CW I had made because I feared it would end up getting nerfed too harshly in PvE which would ruin its already lacking PvP potential. I guess the only reason I made it in the first place was because I was hopeful they would consider much more PvP buffs in the form of more single target buffs or defensive capabilities rather than simpley implementing large nerfs as seems to be the case instead. I thought I'd be safe choosing an already underpowered class in PvP from PvP nerfs Again though, I'll be testing and looking through stuff to see what is really going on and to make sure I am not missing anything, but things look pretty bleak for this class having any PvP viability.
Ok, I just got done on the preview server going through Temple of Spiders and Castle Never and parsed the data. Here is some feedback for how the runs went.
Tempe Of Spiders
Group was 3 CW's, a HR, and a DC. All were high-end players so even with unfamiliar builds we still stomped through it quite easily. All 3 CW's were Oppressor builds - 2 MoF, 1 Spellstorm. With all of the CW's having tabbed CoI and putting down Icy Terrain all over the battlefield enemies had a heck of a time trying to get to us to do any damage. The large spiders that normally do fairly serious damage if you're not paying attention couldn't even get off any attacks. We didn't really try to run through the dungeon pulling several mobs at a time; not sure if it would have worked. But taking it one group at a time was quite easy. The freeze control is phenomenal. At Syndrith, it went smooth as can be. Adds just couldn't get to us. However, there is a new, fairly significant problem. With so much ice on the ground and so many frozen enemies the graphics are going through significant slowdown. Animations lag behind actions. It is also incredibly difficult to see any red areas on the ground with ice covering the floor. Something needs to be done to make red areas visible through the ice.
Combing through the data, Steal time was my highest damaging encounter spell (20% of total damage) followed by Sudden Storm (13%), Icy Terrain (11%) and Conduit of Ice (11%). I normally use Shard of Avalanche but it has no place in this rotation given its long casting time, long cooldown and massive nerf. It does less damage than both Steal Time and Sudden Storm and offers only brief control whereas CoI, and Icy Terrain add ludicrous stacks of chill. Steal time is downright beastly. On critical hits the damage was topping 48,000. The base damage (damage without debuffs) can spike over 27,000. It hits just as hard as Sudden Storm now only with no aiming, huge AOE, and long stun afterward. It's now the unquestioned best encounter spell.
Castle Never
Group was 2 CW, 1 GWF, 1 HR, 1 DC. Even with one less CW it was astounding just how little damage we took going through the dungeon. Our DC felt a little useless not because everyone was doing so much damage that lifesteal made healing irrelevant, but because even in the add-fest that is Castle Never the adds just couldn't fight through all of the ice two oppressor CW's can lay down. We breezed through to the Draco-lich. It wasn't as fast a run as can be currently pulled off but it was still a brisk pace. Things got a big ugly on Draco. There's no efficient way to kill the adds now that CW damage is down. But worse than that all of the freezing and shattering animations caused significant delay between what was happening in the game and what we could see. First, our GWF was killed by a hand. The red spot on the floor and the hand reaching up to grab him did not appear until after he was already dead. Then the same thing happened to each of us in turn. We just got launched up in the air and died then a second later a red circle would appear on the floor and a hand would pop through it. No one was dealing with lag or computer performance issues. This was purely a "the game itself couldn't keep up with the action" problem. This is a serious glitch that needs to be fixed before this can go live.
Parsing the data, it was quite stunning how even everyone was in damage. Everyone but the DC had between 16 and 25 million damage. Damage has definitely become a more level playing field. During this run, Steal time accounted for 26% of my damage with a max hit of 77,000 (base damage 40,000). Sudden Storm 15% with a max of 87,000, Icy Terrain 12%, and Conduit of Ice 11%. The GWF took the most damage at 1.36 million. That's significantly less damage than you would get if a group tried Castle Never right now.
The added control a CW has is an enormous boost to group survivability.
Alright, after actually logging on the preview server to mess around with possible builds and see some of the new effects, things seem relatively fair overall. I do feel like they took notice and added ways to help PvP builds with either more control or single target damage and new effects. Ultimately though we will have to see how it performs though. The other top PvP classes are taking some nerfs as well, so I suppose there is room to make sacrificies, so it may not be as bad as it seems.
I trust the direction these updates are headed though
At first I was mortified about the new CW changes. My friend convinced me to take my CW to the preview server though, and I was just as disappointed in my dps as I thought I would be.
However...
Once I respecced into Oppressor I was thoroughly enjoying myself. The CW Thaumaturge spec still dealt decent damage, but the class was never designed to be the primary dps in a party. With the new Oppressor feats the CW has an unbelievable amount of control. I don't even care about the Singularity cap. Doesn't matter. Using COI on tab, steal time, sudden storm (with the oppressor feat for it), and icy terrain you can keep mobs completely controlled 100% of the time. So stop whining about lack of CC until you try that path.
Oh yeah. Guess I'll ruin it for you all
While you were writing all your hate mail to the devs about dps nerfs did you stop to think: Gee, what if these changes are to make way for a new caster class that focuses on magical dps? Maybe like...
The Scourge Warlock.
Yes the new class is Scourge Warlock. How do I know? I was playing my new CW spec in Karru and the boss dropped an item that was for the aforementioned class. So we're all getting a new caster class, and I for one will be delighted to discover it's capabilities.
Anyway. Stop complaining about your dps. Dungeons will actually be easier with CC specced CWs now. Instead of a dps race we can actually get some teamwork involved and have fun again. Don't believe me? Go to the preview server which they have graciously provided for us and test it for yourself.
Feedback: The Casting Time of RoE & debuff mechanic
If I dodge in between casting two Ray of Enfeeblement, it's actually faster then spam clicking the Tab button to double cast. HOW DOES THAT MAKES ANY SENSE??? Just leave it the way it is in the live game. It's one of the only real debuff abilities CWs can access. You should just make it so it can only be debuffing from one CW at a time, instead of removng the debuff altogether. Only one (or two if tabbd) RoE can debuff any one NPC at a time. You can't just take the most valuable skill and then make it useless in one go....
This is certainly not a PvP nerf. It's virtually all in an effort to rebalance PvE.
This is FALSE and the rework done on every single target spells (that nobody ever used in PVE) is the proof of that.
I spent several more hours on Preview and i can assure you that those changes will affect PVP in a major way, i know and understand that the class is not in the right place in PVE don't get me wrong, but they could've dealt with the situation in a completely different way other than nerf some encounters for 60% of it's dmg (60!) , cut EVERY SINGLE FEAT by 50% and make every spell so slow to cast that you are literally STUCK on the ground for 5 minutes just to complete a full encounter rotation.
As i said on another thread what everybody likes about this game is the smooth combact system, so please don't destroy one of the best things in this game with an unnecessary sloooooooow robotic casting time.
The class itself is arguably one of the hardest to play correctly in PVP right now on live server,that's why to be honest there's only around 4/5 pvp cws worth mentioning in this game since beta, and this patch removes every skill from the class leaving it only with a ray of frost constant freeze spamming.
The changes obviously will only create another 5 months of unnecessary pvp inbalance that could've been avoided simply fixing bugs and toning down the damage of some aoe spell in a decent way.
Ah and please don't delete this post , Devs need feedbacks, even the ones they might disagree with, it's the only way to have a respectful discussion about the upcoming changes.
Feedback: Ice control Could it be a bit too strong? At least in Open PvP others were not able to do anything if once caught in a freeze. I mean, sure, a Great Weapon Fighter could break free at some point, but a Guardian Fighter just needs a wooden stick to be an ice to go.
Magic Missile: The first two strikes can be chained together about 40% slower. The third strike of Magic Missile now takes 1.4 seconds to fire (up from 1.2).
Chill Strike: This power now takes 1.2 seconds to fire (up from 1 second).
Entangling Force: This power now takes 1.2 seconds to fire (up from 1 second).
Ray of Enfeeblement: This power now takes 1.5 seconds to fire (up from .9 seconds).
Ice Knife: This power now takes 1.2 seconds to fire (up from .93 seconds).
Imho, increasing these spells' casting time is unnecessary because they are PvP spells.
They are not the reason that CWs out damage other classes in PvE. The reason CWs out damage other classes in PvE is because they have high damage AOE spells such as Shard of the Endless Avalanche, Sudden Storm, and many AOE boosting feats, which are going to be nerfed greatly.
In PvE, CWs only use the said single target spells in rare situations such as Valindra's Tower's final fight. And CW's high damage doesn't come from those single target fights. Therefore increasing these spells' casting times won't help balance PvE.
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zebularMember, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 15,270Community Moderator
edited June 2014
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So I ran a four man CN in preview yesterday. The party was 2 CW's 1 DC and 1 GF. The run went A LOT slower. But as i was an oppressor, I was able to control the adds very well. The dracolich was a challenge compared to before but we downed it in one try. It was very slow, as we were a four man group. I'm very happy with the way oppressor is performing in a PVE dungeon run atm.
I feel like I can be the only CW in a rainbow CN run with confidence now as an oppressor(MOF) in preview. Granted, we are all around 15k GS with greater and perfect weapon enchants. I myself have been playing CW since the start of open beta. The GF in my group was keeping a lot of the aggro too. He did complain that his shield had such a small amount of time. And in Ice wind dale, his shield was useless against beholder attacks.
I can see how it is easily overpower in pvp, but I don't pvp and it would be so terrible if they nerfed the usefulness of the new oppressor due to pvp. They should only implement these changes if they can make the skills and feats behave differently in pvp.
I did post this in the other cw discussion thread, but I think my experience can help others to understand that the cw is a bit different mechanically, compared to live server.
I think the casting time increase was a bit silly of a change. I can see how that makes the GF more necessary to initiate the fight, but good GF's have always been welcome in my groups.
Also, I do not know how viable Thuam or renegade will be in the preview, I will attempt to test them with a full group later today.
So I ran a four man CN in preview yesterday. The party was 2 CW's 1 DC and 1 GF. The run went A LOT slower. But as i was an oppressor, I was able to control the adds very well. The dracolich was a challenge compared to before but we downed it in one try. It was very slow, as we were a four man group. I'm very happy with the way oppressor is performing in a PVE dungeon run atm.
Feedback: Casting time changes These changes have left the class sluggish and choppy and I am afraid they will hamper fluidity and feel of playing CW. Imo, like these changes are unnecessary for on top of huge damage nerfs. Casting time nerfs should be measure of last resort when nothing else can be adjusted which is obviously not the case here.
So I ran a four man CN in preview yesterday. The party was 2 CW's 1 DC and 1 GF. The run went A LOT slower. But as i was an oppressor, I was able to control the adds very well. The dracolich was a challenge compared to before but we downed it in one try. It was very slow, as we were a four man group. I'm very happy with the way oppressor is performing in a PVE dungeon run atm.
I feel like I can be the only CW in a rainbow CN run with confidence now as an oppressor(MOF) in preview. Granted, we are all around 15k GS with greater and perfect weapon enchants. I myself have been playing CW since the start of open beta. The GF in my group was keeping a lot of the aggro too. He did complain that his shield had such a small amount of time. And in Ice wind dale, his shield was useless against beholder attacks.
I can see how it is easily overpower in pvp, but I don't pvp and it would be so terrible if they nerfed the usefulness of the new oppressor due to pvp. They should only implement these changes if they can make the skills and feats behave differently in pvp.
I did post this in the other cw discussion thread, but I think my experience can help others to understand that the cw is a bit different mechanically, compared to live server.
I think the casting time increase was a bit silly of a change. I can see how that makes the GF more necessary to initiate the fight, but good GF's have always been welcome in my groups.
Also, I do not know how viable Thuam or renegade will be in the preview, I will attempt to test them with a full group later today.
One should note that, using CoI and Icy Terrain, you currently are able to stack ArPen and your damage output will likely be about ~30% lower than now.
I was VERY pleased the way Oppressor performed in damage and CC until I found out the reason for it.
Speaking of Oppressor. I ran a very basic build yesterday and solo'd some medium HEs to the bosses. After I managed to freeze mobs it was autopilot. They can barely attack between freeze, Shatter, Steal Time, Shard and OF. Oppressor is perma control in its current state.
Plus, I tested it against these control resistant lvl62 IWD folks. Normal runs should be even more relaxing.
One should note that, using CoI and Icy Terrain, you currently are able to stack ArPen and your damage output will likely be about ~30% lower than now.
I was VERY pleased the way Oppressor performed in damage and CC until I found out the reason for it.
I think that is a very viable way to play the new oppressor but, to me, COI just would not feel the same without the assailing force feat. The powers I used were Entangling force tab, icy terrain, steal time, and fanning the flame. With this setup i kept everything bunched very well for the GF to keep aggro between stuns. I also took advantage of alacrity with my rotation.
I think that is a very viable way to play the new oppressor but, to me, COI just would not feel the same without the assailing force feat. The powers I used were Entangling force tab, icy terrain, steal time, and fanning the flame. With this setup i kept everything bunched very well for the GF to keep aggro between stuns. I also took advantage of alacrity with my rotation.
Fanning the flame is also a DoT so combined with Icy Terrain I assume you should have been able to stack ArPen twice as well. Never tested it, but Draco should have 22% DR, which means you were probably dealing 44%+ bugged damage to him.
Fanning the flame is also a DoT so combined with Icy Terrain I assume you should have been able to stack ArPen twice as well. Never tested it, but Draco should have 22% DR, which means you were probably dealing 44%+ bugged damage to him.
Wait stacked armor pen? How does this work? I was not aware of this. Uh oh. xD
Comments
Notice the bold font?
Practically all the bosses are difficult BECAUSE OF ADDS, with the few exceptions being MC and VT (during the first phase). The major issue ARE the adds. Bosses are giant hulks of HP; adds pose by far the biggest threat in dungeon runs.
Cleric: Marquis Elmdore - Current Main
Wizard: Iamblichus
Fighter: Anna the Titan
Barbarian: Anann Valkyrja
Ranger: Minerva Cory'phaia
Warlock: Suri Coralyne Reid
Guild: She Looked Level 18.
Alliance: Imperium
It Will only cause stacking of more cws.
Please consider increasing it to something more reasonable (at least 10).
If you nerf our damage, at least allow us to control properly, please.
As for Eye Of The Storm, please come up with something different because with ICD of 90 seconds as well as a nerf to sudden storm, spellstorm is no longer a desirable paragon. The nerfing of the key heroic feature of the paragon simply ruins it in my eyes.
If you have to nerf it, I would rather have a reduced chance to get into EOTS than a ridiculously high cooldown.
Or perhaps keep the same functionality of live only with a smaller chance to crit when eye of the storm is active (say, 75% per each encounter?).
I am just bringing up ideas but anything is better than the current solution IMO.
GS: 10,954 // Power: 2416 // Crit: 2162 // ArPen: 1,919 // Rec: 2,218 // Def: 958
Heroic Feats: Weapon Mastery 3/3; Toughness 2/3; Fight On 4/5; Wizard’s Wrath 3/3; Arcane Enhancement 3/3; Learned Spellcaster 5/5
Paragon Feats:
Oppressor N/A // Thaum: Tempest Magic 5/5; Snap Freeze 5/5 // Renegade: Critical Power 5/5; Reaper’s Touch 5/5; Phantasmal Destruction 5/5; Masterful Arcane Theft 5/5; Chaos Magic 1/1
Daily: Ice Storm; Ice Dagger // Master: Ice Spike // Encounter: Shard; Sudden Storm; Steal Time
At Will: Magic Missile; Ray of Frost // Class: Evocation; Storm Spell
Learned Spellcaster bonus is not reflected in the Character Sheet. Same as on Live.
Assailant Force: Tried a build using this ability. I never saw it proc. It would be helpful if the tooltips included pertinent information to selecting the skill. For that matter, all abilities should include pertinent information to selecting the skill. This is an inconsistency overall with the tooltips that makes it impossible to intelligently select feats and abilities. Storm Spell is a great example of this. The tooltip does not provide you with any indication of how great the ability is, as the proc chance does not provide you with the magnitude of the effect. This is not friendly to the casual player.
Shard of the Endless Avalanche: On Live, I can destroy any trash mob in DR. No longer does. Match it with Slow Time…and then all trash dies. If it crits, then all trash dies.
Used to be that Chill Strike on Mastery would kill group of trash mobs or leave them with about 5% hp. On Test they have about 10-15% HP. By trash mobs, I mean the thayan servitors grouped in 3-4 or skeletons grouped the same. These are the lowest HP mobs in Dread Ring. If I crit, they all die. Otherwise, I either use another AE attack or mop up with magic missile.
Eye of the Storm: If you have no crit severity, you have less than 5% average increase. Statistically, you would get 6 seconds every 90 seconds of 100 crit. That is 75% more damage divided by 6/90 (or 15). There is your 5%. But wait, there is more. You would actually be critting normally over that 6 seconds, so you have to deduct your crit chance from that 5%. My crit chance is 34%, so Eye of the Storm would theoretically buff my damage by 3.3%. But since you only have a 6 second window every 90 seconds, there is a good chance your encounters will be on cooldown. Anyway, Eye of the Storm is not worth it now IMHO.
Companion seems to be doing a lot more damage. I use the Cleric Disciple and I notice them actually killing monsters now. Never noticed that on live. As they are only 15th companion level.
Dread Ring Synopsis: Yes it takes longer. One or two spells more. But that is literally seconds. Not a big impact to your soloing.
Sharandar Synopsis: Same as Dread Ring. You still own the content. Just a few seconds slower per encounter if you have equipment similar to mine. With better equipment, you should see almost no change.
IWD Synopsis: Did merchant caravan heroic encounter twice as solo. Was able to do it. But Shard got stuck on the terrain twice when I tried to cast it. It really does need to be a reliable skill now that it does not do as much damage.
Tried totem of auril and got owned with last wave. With practice I think I could do it. Definitely if I had a few k more GS.
Did not have any real trouble soloing the content in Ice Wind Dale. Dire Bears take a couple of rotations, normal bears one rotation. Yetis take longer cause I did not choke them. But still shorter than on my better equipt DC with damage loadout. My DC kills the Dire Bears in a similar amount of time, though. Basically 2 rotations.
Overall Opinion: Is it a damage nerf? Of course. Does it kill the game. Of course not. It does make you up your game and play better. You will probably have to tweak what skills you use. There likely will not be as much steam rolling of content and more actual skills needed. But I did not go into a Dungeon. So that part is speculation.
Well technically you're not wrong but Thaum builds got destroyed or nearly destroyed (for some it may be damage nerf on feats or for people like me Assailing Force change is destroying this feat tree)
After Gentlemancrush said Oppressor is actually control tree I checked it out. Dunno if we have diffrent opinion on what's control (Oppressor is more of a de/buffer tree) or that was a joke but yea... Oppressor compared to (at least) Thaumaturge does not increase overall control, it just decreases dps.
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The first sentence that someone hears entering NW website is from a video, and goes "for D&D fans by D&D fans" or something like that. Already there is a super important factor because D&D TT experience and MMO are two quite different things. Everyone knows what I am talking about - when you finish your dungeon in D&D and kill that evil drow priestess who transformed into a drider, you finally helped all those villages, the local lord will award you, you are a hero! In MMO you get a demonwrap cloak that is worth few thousands AD and are sad she didn't drop that Avatar of War chest piece you wanted to see drop again. So you queue for ToS again. In D&D world you don't care about your bard's lame damage in this dungeon, because she negotiated with the traders for better weapons, she healed the lord's daughter and earned the trust of many, etc etc. In MMO you want this dungeon to end ASAP, because you did it today twice already and will do it again in the evening. There is no traders or lord's daughter.
What I want to say is, that because of the game economy / game design (1) (example: no queue restrictions at all. You know, like 1 CN per week or day), everything functions the way it does.
Secondly, there is a design philosophy (2) fail here as well. One would be all the holes in SP / CN and so on and so on. Players started using the terrain to their advantage and repelling/pushing stuff into those holes and off the cliffs, so developers got tired of it and put invisible walls. How would it look in real D&D?
Dungeon master: to your right you see a group of skeletons patrolling near the edge. The abyss bellow seems to be very deep and deadly.
Player 1: I have this AoE skill that pushes stuff 3 squares back. I want to use it now.
Dungeon master: ****, I have spend 2 hours designing this part yesterday. Totally forgot about that skill of yours. Can we...like..forget about that abyss part now?
Players: you are lame.
This did happen and anyone with a decent level of tolerance and will to listen a bit and think could understand both sides and where they are coming from. It wasn't game breaking and really the smartest thing was to let it go. But now we're coming to a game breaking thing. It's because the game was made with 5 classes and only one was decently equipped to fight AoE. The tank class was made weaker than it should have been (personal opinion!) compared to other classes. So when your dungeon design is room after room after room filled with manymanymany adds, you can be **** sure people will use that one.
Now I am not just blindly defending CW. CW is way too strong in PVE content. I know. I am a very experienced CW main with ~110 days ingame playtime, that has 3-manned CN many times, soloed T2 stuff, 1-manned first 3 bosses of CN and so on. Who, if not me, is aware of the fact that no other class can pull of 120k shards every **** room. I am the one who saw that my GF/HR friends cant find the groups so I just took them with me when I could. Me and another CW friend didn't care who we ran with because we knew we can pull it of no matter who is in the group. . If we as 2CW+DC or 3CW can easily 3 man CN with no wipes or anything, and a 5 man group with no CW takes more time to complete CN than us (if they actually do it) it says waaaaaaaaaay more than enough, no matter how much I love the PVE throne that I am *oh so comfortably* sitting on. So YES, CW needs nerfs - some nerfs to our dmg kit, and (did I say this 7 times already
I have waited one day so that criticism I had here becomes constructive. I didn't want to just come and cry, no matter how much I felt like it yesterday lol. And it isn't only about CWs, I also cannot understand how will a GWF survive Draco hands now. If he goes sentinel for the *making unstoppable useful* feat - he won't deal good damage. I also feel bad that GF suffers from constant nerfing of the shared skills with his 1 word longer bro. I also feel bad that TR's big source of damage in PvP is a weapon enchant. There are indeed things to be done and I actually think they were going in that direction until these patch notes.
Because I understand how hard it is to balance a game like this, I actually did prepare a good bunch of suggestions. From a lot of number tweaks with CW feats and sets (plus a "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH EYE OF THE STORM AAAAARGHHHHHH" ) to game suggestions - thumbs up on single target bosses so expanding those ideas and seeing what else can you do on them, to a series of pvp ideas, some possibly not that hard to imagine and accomplish - changing the "just stand on the base forever and contest it" meta. (looking at you poor TRs who had to adopt and just be in stealth forever). Some are very radical ones - What if every spell for every class would deal different base damage to pvp and pve? I know it's very radical change, but think about it for just a moment. Wouldn't these 2 changes fix a good deal of issues? And before someone says there is no room for radical changes here, having CW deal 30% less damage from feats and main spell hitting for 60% less is a very radical change.
However, something has made me change my mind. Something happened that opened my eyes a bit and show me that there's more to it than just nerf us CN farmers who made little fortunes running CN 24/7. The thing basically showed that the intention indeed was to nerf just about everything with the only AoE class in the game. To make it unplayable. To nerf it recklessly.
A blue item for warlock just dropped for me on test shard.
First of all, it feels like you're playing in slomo with all these longer cast times. Certainly takes some getting used to.
Feats setup:
ACT against a medium HE:
It's only a couple minutes of testing, but so far Thaum doesn't feel as apocalyptic. Shard has been severely nerfed, but remains very useful for it's CC. Oppressive = impressive, Sudden Storm still Crits for 30k+ and Steal Time moves into the top spot for encounters. Very high damage and very good CC for PVE.
I hope the capstone from Thaum is bugged, because the proc rate is abysmal. In its current form it's easily the worst of all capstone feats.
In Mod 3 I was able to solo medium sized HEs to some extent and this hasn't changed although the damage is lower. Thaum still has CC + sufficient damage.
I tested every path opressor/thauma etc.
My dmg is really a joke with this nerf...
In my earlier post, i said, yeah its ok to cut the dps, but its really too much.
HR is so OP now, we killed mobs same time, and he is killing them so much faster, all of their skills etc get a boost.
PVE we loose too much dps/control and all is now slower that caps more of our damage.
To bring it to the point, we are screwed and i dont see a reason, why i should play my cw anymore.
No def, slow, low hp, no dmg, nerfed control etc. I cant see a reason to play this character anymore.
PVP
I made some duells with many guys...
Opressor is ok, you can freeze the target a lot, but i lost to gwfs and against a HR i have no chance at all, because he is healing so fast... He can stand without doing something and i cant kill him fast because of his healing skill.
Of course i can kill him if ice knive hits hard etc but in a real fight, i see no light for us cws.
Wow we can now freeze a guy and do low dmg and hope there is someone who is hitting the guy we freezed.
Overall very
I understand the nerf, but they overdid it, its too much and wont help anyone, beside cws, other classes will have a problem too, if cws are nerfed like that. I hope they reconsider this issue. Really sorry and ... for the time i spend for this character.
Of course i am angry as many others too, because 1 nerf and all your efforts etc are screwed.
Greetings from Germany.
Now I am not infallable and pulled many things you may not agree with me grabbing. If you do then you can of course send me a PM about any specfic post and I will look into it but ideally we ask that you post your feedback in a direct format so it is easier for the deverlopers to read and understand your concerns in this specific situation.
If you want to discuss speculation or disagree with other posts rather than directing your feedback and experiences to the developers than please do so here. Thanks!
Off Topic Note: It seems this oddly enough has to be explained. Dungeons were never intended to be done by dragging as much as you can around and burn them all at once. The fact that could be done without a GF was the icing on top. Sadly many posts I grabbed were arguing based on the desire to continue that and that absolutely was not something that was ever intended to be done to begin with.
I hope it's the former. A CW spell that goes through control immunity would be very useful in PVP as there are far too many mechanics that ignore CC in PVP, making the CW a real challenge to play.
Basically when you use repel it will prioritize controllable targets so it doesn't repel only four back instead of five when there were enough controllable targets to repel five.
This is certainly not a PvP nerf. It's virtually all in an effort to rebalance PvE.
I would be inclined to agree with you sir!
However I believe most of the changes made here were to address the "CW Stacking" issues in dungeons? So PvE has severely and very negatively effected PvP in this case. And I find it a shame that changes are being made that adversely affect PvPers as a result of PvE.
It should not be either way. Balance is very possible and feedback from both dedicated PvPers AND dedicated PvEers is necessary to accomplish that.
This mechanic is effecting PvP negatively, how would fixing, or changing this effect PvE? The devs need to hear ALL sides.
Feedback: Overall
I first have to say that these buffs are some pretty serious business and I wanted to spell some things out for people not actually testing things and just crying "nerf" because things look bad on paper. The CW was the most seriously gimped class in PvP and has been for a long time. They have no tankability simply because tankability in this game = max life + deflect + LS/RG, three things CW sets are seriously lacking in, especially for PvP. This much is true and everyone knows it- CWs were support roles. Right now everyone is seeing "damage reduced" and "activation times/cooldowns increased" and crying about it- get over it. I've spent the majority of the morning testing different CW builds and DPS is just off the freakin' charts for some of the builds. CWs- you're getting a buff. Shut up about it and go figure it out. Take some initiative and plan/adjust your class build instead of waiting for someone to post an overrated build for it on a forum somewhere.
There are, however, a few things that I DO have to complain about and some things that I cannot stress enough should not be changed no matter how much people complain about it. Here goes:
Feedback: Powers
Conduit of Ice: This power has had its recharge time reduced to 13 seconds (down from 18 seconds).
Leave the cooldown alone. This skill is typically tabbed and therefor gets a nice cooldown boost with the PvP set. In PvE it doesn't really matter since most mobs are dead before it wears off anyway.
Conduit of Ice: This power has had its damage reduced by roughly 33%.
This damage nerf seems a bit excessive since Conduit will no longer grant bonus mitigation from the Thaumaturge final feat. The mitigation removal is nerf enough. Reducing it's damage even further makes it a poor first choice other than for quick chill stacks and even then it's almost not worth it.
Entangling Force: This power has had its total base damage reduced by about 10% overall.
Again, I'm not understanding the damage nerf here. Since the AP gain fix from tabbed Entangling Force, this skill is rarely ever used. I think the damage on it should be left be when you consider the cooldown.
Icy Terrain: This power now ticks every 1 second (down from every 1.3 seconds).
Give it a decent slow effect (maybe 25% or so) to keep enemies on it a little longer to do more damage AND to keep them from getting to the caster as fast. The immobilize is useless and only affects enemies in the area when cast. Typically, they're already close enough to attack so the immobilize is useless. Add slow- remove immobilize.
Ray of Enfeeblement: This power now takes 1.5 seconds to fire (up from .9 seconds).
Ray of Enfeeblement: This power has had its recharge time increased to 18 seconds (up from 14).
Ray of Enfeeblement: Allies no longer benefit from this debuff.
I don't understand the changes to this power at all. Ray is only ever used for party debuffs. The increased activation leaves the caster "open" for longer and gives them a greater chance to be interrupted. The cooldown also makes no sense since it only affects one target. This power is primarily useless and only really ever used to help out the DPS classes.
Steal Time: This power has had its damage increased by roughly 65%.
Steal Time: This power has had its recharge time reduced to 18 seconds (down from 22 seconds).
The damage boost seems a bit excessive. Maybe half the damage boost since shorter cooldowns = more casts which = more damage.
Shard of the Endless Avalanche: This power has had its base impact damage reduced by roughly 33%.
WAY too excessive of a nerf. 15% or so would suffice since the push doesn't do much damage to begin with.
Shard of the Endless Avalanche: This power has had its explosion damage reduced by roughly 60%.
I agree Shard is completely overpowered- I've had mine crit for over 30k per enemy on my own volition. But 60%? That's a HUGE nerf to the biggest damage dealer. I think maybe 30% would be a little more realistic.
Fanning the Flame: This power now takes 1.5 seconds to fire (up from .6 seconds).
Double the activation time??? For a DoT skill??? It takes 1 second to cast and then my CW just stands there with here arms out like a scarecrow for a second AFTER it's cast. Maybe up to .98 would be good, but MORE than DOUBLE the initial cast time???
Fanning the Flame: This power has had its recharge time increased to 22 seconds (up from 15 seconds).
I just don't understand why cooldowns and cast times are being increased. CW skills are largely telegraphed and easy as hell to dodge in PvP. Giving them longer activation times just makes it easier to dodge and then takes even longer to be recast (and probably dodged again).
Arcane Singularity: Activation time increased to 2 seconds (up from 1 second).
Arcane Singularity: Now can affect up to 8 targets (down from 15).
Not really a big deal since most of the parties I roll with don't even use Sing. Oppressive Force is entirely too OP to give this daily a shot at being used anymore especially since throwing was ruined. All I can really say for this power is it's kind of like beating a dead horse.
Oppressive Force: This power has had its overall damage reduced by roughly 9%.
I think more needs done with this power, honestly. No enemy limit, short bursts of damage before the final explosion, and a daze effect on top of that. Either nerf the first few pulses to do no damage or else give it a bigger damage reduction.
Eye of the Storm: This power now has an internal cooldown of 90 seconds. Base Duration increased to 4 seconds (up from 2). Duration increase per rank increased to 1 (up from .5).
I think this is the best idea of all for several reasons. You can stack every stat but crit and still crit like crazy with it. With the right progressions and timing it can make for some OP burst damage with a lot of different skills. Finally, this class feature is probably the single reason why people choose Spellstorm over Fire. I do, however, disagree with the ICD. 90 seconds seems a bit excessive and will make this feature almost completely useless. Maybe give it an ICD of 30-45 seconds.
Feedback: Feats
Shatter Strike: *REWORK* When you freeze a target they are afflicted by Shattered for 10 seconds. Shattered foes have a chance when taking damage to be stunned for 5 seconds (1 second on players) and take up to 5% of their Max HP in damage (max 300% weapon damage). This effect consumes Shatter. Additionally, your control powers deal 100% of your weapon damage against control immune targets and Chill lasts 2.5 seconds longer.
This feat, in general, needs a complete rework once again. With 2 ice wizards in the same party the damage output from this feat alone is completely insane. In open PvP another ice wizard and myself completely destroyed both a GWF and a GF in a matter of seconds.
Chaos Magic: *REWORK* Dealing Damage to targets has a chance to apply Chaos Magic to yourself. When you are affected by Chaos Magic you cannot be affected by a new Chaos Magic. You will be affected by Chaotic Growth, Chaotic Nexus, or Chaotic Fury.
Chaotic Growth - Heal yourself for 200% weapon damage every second for 10 seconds.
200% every second for 10 seconds??? Maybe make it heal for 1-2% of your max life every second for 10 seconds. Otherwise you're going to have unkillable CWs.
Chaotic Nexus - You gain 5% additional Armor Penetration and Critical Chance for 10 seconds.
Chaotic Fury - You gain gain 10% additional Power and Lifesteal for 10 seconds.
Tempe Of Spiders
Group was 3 CW's, a HR, and a DC. All were high-end players so even with unfamiliar builds we still stomped through it quite easily. All 3 CW's were Oppressor builds - 2 MoF, 1 Spellstorm. With all of the CW's having tabbed CoI and putting down Icy Terrain all over the battlefield enemies had a heck of a time trying to get to us to do any damage. The large spiders that normally do fairly serious damage if you're not paying attention couldn't even get off any attacks. We didn't really try to run through the dungeon pulling several mobs at a time; not sure if it would have worked. But taking it one group at a time was quite easy. The freeze control is phenomenal. At Syndrith, it went smooth as can be. Adds just couldn't get to us. However, there is a new, fairly significant problem. With so much ice on the ground and so many frozen enemies the graphics are going through significant slowdown. Animations lag behind actions. It is also incredibly difficult to see any red areas on the ground with ice covering the floor. Something needs to be done to make red areas visible through the ice.
Combing through the data, Steal time was my highest damaging encounter spell (20% of total damage) followed by Sudden Storm (13%), Icy Terrain (11%) and Conduit of Ice (11%). I normally use Shard of Avalanche but it has no place in this rotation given its long casting time, long cooldown and massive nerf. It does less damage than both Steal Time and Sudden Storm and offers only brief control whereas CoI, and Icy Terrain add ludicrous stacks of chill. Steal time is downright beastly. On critical hits the damage was topping 48,000. The base damage (damage without debuffs) can spike over 27,000. It hits just as hard as Sudden Storm now only with no aiming, huge AOE, and long stun afterward. It's now the unquestioned best encounter spell.
Castle Never
Group was 2 CW, 1 GWF, 1 HR, 1 DC. Even with one less CW it was astounding just how little damage we took going through the dungeon. Our DC felt a little useless not because everyone was doing so much damage that lifesteal made healing irrelevant, but because even in the add-fest that is Castle Never the adds just couldn't fight through all of the ice two oppressor CW's can lay down. We breezed through to the Draco-lich. It wasn't as fast a run as can be currently pulled off but it was still a brisk pace. Things got a big ugly on Draco. There's no efficient way to kill the adds now that CW damage is down. But worse than that all of the freezing and shattering animations caused significant delay between what was happening in the game and what we could see. First, our GWF was killed by a hand. The red spot on the floor and the hand reaching up to grab him did not appear until after he was already dead. Then the same thing happened to each of us in turn. We just got launched up in the air and died then a second later a red circle would appear on the floor and a hand would pop through it. No one was dealing with lag or computer performance issues. This was purely a "the game itself couldn't keep up with the action" problem. This is a serious glitch that needs to be fixed before this can go live.
Parsing the data, it was quite stunning how even everyone was in damage. Everyone but the DC had between 16 and 25 million damage. Damage has definitely become a more level playing field. During this run, Steal time accounted for 26% of my damage with a max hit of 77,000 (base damage 40,000). Sudden Storm 15% with a max of 87,000, Icy Terrain 12%, and Conduit of Ice 11%. The GWF took the most damage at 1.36 million. That's significantly less damage than you would get if a group tried Castle Never right now.
The added control a CW has is an enormous boost to group survivability.
I trust the direction these updates are headed though
However...
Once I respecced into Oppressor I was thoroughly enjoying myself. The CW Thaumaturge spec still dealt decent damage, but the class was never designed to be the primary dps in a party. With the new Oppressor feats the CW has an unbelievable amount of control. I don't even care about the Singularity cap. Doesn't matter. Using COI on tab, steal time, sudden storm (with the oppressor feat for it), and icy terrain you can keep mobs completely controlled 100% of the time. So stop whining about lack of CC until you try that path.
Oh yeah. Guess I'll ruin it for you all
While you were writing all your hate mail to the devs about dps nerfs did you stop to think: Gee, what if these changes are to make way for a new caster class that focuses on magical dps? Maybe like...
The Scourge Warlock.
Yes the new class is Scourge Warlock. How do I know? I was playing my new CW spec in Karru and the boss dropped an item that was for the aforementioned class. So we're all getting a new caster class, and I for one will be delighted to discover it's capabilities.
Anyway. Stop complaining about your dps. Dungeons will actually be easier with CC specced CWs now. Instead of a dps race we can actually get some teamwork involved and have fun again. Don't believe me? Go to the preview server which they have graciously provided for us and test it for yourself.
If I dodge in between casting two Ray of Enfeeblement, it's actually faster then spam clicking the Tab button to double cast. HOW DOES THAT MAKES ANY SENSE??? Just leave it the way it is in the live game. It's one of the only real debuff abilities CWs can access. You should just make it so it can only be debuffing from one CW at a time, instead of removng the debuff altogether. Only one (or two if tabbd) RoE can debuff any one NPC at a time. You can't just take the most valuable skill and then make it useless in one go....
CRAZY MIKE - 14.6k PvE CW
Backbone - 16.7k PvP HR
[SIGPIC]http://i59.tinypic.com/s3hts7.png[/SIGPIC]
This is FALSE and the rework done on every single target spells (that nobody ever used in PVE) is the proof of that.
I spent several more hours on Preview and i can assure you that those changes will affect PVP in a major way, i know and understand that the class is not in the right place in PVE don't get me wrong, but they could've dealt with the situation in a completely different way other than nerf some encounters for 60% of it's dmg (60!) , cut EVERY SINGLE FEAT by 50% and make every spell so slow to cast that you are literally STUCK on the ground for 5 minutes just to complete a full encounter rotation.
As i said on another thread what everybody likes about this game is the smooth combact system, so please don't destroy one of the best things in this game with an unnecessary sloooooooow robotic casting time.
The class itself is arguably one of the hardest to play correctly in PVP right now on live server,that's why to be honest there's only around 4/5 pvp cws worth mentioning in this game since beta, and this patch removes every skill from the class leaving it only with a ray of frost constant freeze spamming.
The changes obviously will only create another 5 months of unnecessary pvp inbalance that could've been avoided simply fixing bugs and toning down the damage of some aoe spell in a decent way.
Ah and please don't delete this post , Devs need feedbacks, even the ones they might disagree with, it's the only way to have a respectful discussion about the upcoming changes.
Could it be a bit too strong? At least in Open PvP others were not able to do anything if once caught in a freeze. I mean, sure, a Great Weapon Fighter could break free at some point, but a Guardian Fighter just needs a wooden stick to be an ice to go.
They are not the reason that CWs out damage other classes in PvE. The reason CWs out damage other classes in PvE is because they have high damage AOE spells such as Shard of the Endless Avalanche, Sudden Storm, and many AOE boosting feats, which are going to be nerfed greatly.
In PvE, CWs only use the said single target spells in rare situations such as Valindra's Tower's final fight. And CW's high damage doesn't come from those single target fights. Therefore increasing these spells' casting times won't help balance PvE.
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I feel like I can be the only CW in a rainbow CN run with confidence now as an oppressor(MOF) in preview. Granted, we are all around 15k GS with greater and perfect weapon enchants. I myself have been playing CW since the start of open beta. The GF in my group was keeping a lot of the aggro too. He did complain that his shield had such a small amount of time. And in Ice wind dale, his shield was useless against beholder attacks.
I can see how it is easily overpower in pvp, but I don't pvp and it would be so terrible if they nerfed the usefulness of the new oppressor due to pvp. They should only implement these changes if they can make the skills and feats behave differently in pvp.
I did post this in the other cw discussion thread, but I think my experience can help others to understand that the cw is a bit different mechanically, compared to live server.
I think the casting time increase was a bit silly of a change. I can see how that makes the GF more necessary to initiate the fight, but good GF's have always been welcome in my groups.
Also, I do not know how viable Thuam or renegade will be in the preview, I will attempt to test them with a full group later today.
That's a good news, thanks for posting.
somewhere is fighting for you.
These changes have left the class sluggish and choppy and I am afraid they will hamper fluidity and feel of playing CW. Imo, like these changes are unnecessary for on top of huge damage nerfs. Casting time nerfs should be measure of last resort when nothing else can be adjusted which is obviously not the case here.
One should note that, using CoI and Icy Terrain, you currently are able to stack ArPen and your damage output will likely be about ~30% lower than now.
I was VERY pleased the way Oppressor performed in damage and CC until I found out the reason for it.
Plus, I tested it against these control resistant lvl62 IWD folks. Normal runs should be even more relaxing.
I think that is a very viable way to play the new oppressor but, to me, COI just would not feel the same without the assailing force feat. The powers I used were Entangling force tab, icy terrain, steal time, and fanning the flame. With this setup i kept everything bunched very well for the GF to keep aggro between stuns. I also took advantage of alacrity with my rotation.
Fanning the flame is also a DoT so combined with Icy Terrain I assume you should have been able to stack ArPen twice as well. Never tested it, but Draco should have 22% DR, which means you were probably dealing 44%+ bugged damage to him.
Wait stacked armor pen? How does this work? I was not aware of this. Uh oh. xD