chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
Icy Rays:
Effect: Nuke spell that can hit two targets. More damage if you target two different mobs. About the same as chill strike.
Mastery: Damage increased 50%
When to use: Single target fights.
Notes: A great spell that you actually can’t spec into at first (you have to take the other options), but is nice when you need it.
Steal Time:
Effect: Hits mobs for five ticks each, each tick applying slow, final tick hits harder and applies stun.
Mastery: Now creates combat advantage and increases run speed for team.
When to use: All the time except single target fights.
Notes: Steal time is incredible, does good damage, has a long stun, and procs all your feats and abilities. On Mastery, it is mostly to mess with your teammates, as it throws off their timing, which is potentially hilarious.
Shard of the Endless Avalanche:
Effect: Summons a big pall of power, which can be pushed (twice). The ball will slam and prone (one target at a time), then finally explode (ten seconds or when you hit two targets at once), which deals additional damage and prones. The target limit on the explosion is 10, not 5, not 15 (testing by me), but can prone more (testing by Carla Valentine).
Mastery: You can now summon and move the shard wherever you want.
When to use: Whenever you are fighting enough mobs to make use of the control.
Notes: The community is down on shard right now, because a recent nerf took most of its damage away. There is a rumor that it only prones 5 targets (obviously wrong). I confirmed the target limit for damage today and I’m trusting the word of my good friend for larger limits - which are often hard to see in dungeons.
So if you are like me and like to do big pulls - shard is still a lifesaver. Don’t listen to the detractors, this spell is still good.
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
29 - Dailies.
I have said over and over again that AP gain is important for CWs, and it might be the most important stat. This is not because CW dailies do tons of damage (even though the damage is good), but because CW dailies impose tons of control on the mobs. There are times when if you cast your daily, everything is fine, but if you miss your daily, the party wipes. That’s how important CW dailies are.
After they nerfed Sing, MoF CW is down to four effective dailies, all of which are great abilities and have their uses.
Ice Storm:
Effect: A burst effect, add chill stacks and knockback. Hits very hard (target limit 5).
When to use: GG PvP (what a blast!), situations where you have 2-5 mobs, particularly those who are control immune. A great example is LOL where you have encounters of 5 or less, several immune to control.
Notes: The knockback normally is bad for the party, so this daily has very limited uses, but is very nice in those situations.
Arcane Singularity:
Effect: Gathers mobs up into a singularity in the sky, then drops them. Effect is somewhat slow (target limit 8)
When to use: After the nerf (used to be 15 targets), Furious Immolation is better than Singularity in every way.
Notes: this spell used to be amazing, as you could gather the mobs and everyone could wail on them. Back in mod 0, CW job was to keep the singularity in the sky so everyone else could do their jobs. Those days are gone.
Oppressive Force:
Effect: Creates an oppressive force, ticks multiple times, stuns all the mobs, no target limit
When to use: Anytime there are greater than 8 mobs.
Notes: OF is amazing right now. When your AP gain is high enough you can do large pulls and solo dungeons and whatnot, all because of Oppressive Force.
Ice Knife:
Effect: A single target nuke, adds chill stack, prone effect
When to use: Any single target fight.
Notes: Ice Knife has the highest damage of any daily, but only affects one target. If you are facing 2-5 targets, ice storm is better, if it’s 6-8 targets, Furious immolation is better, and if it’s over 8 targets the Oppressive Force
Furious Immolation (Master of Flame):
Effect: Gathers all the mobs together, quickly. Does good damage and adds smolder (target limit 8).
When to use: Any dungeon or situation where you are under the target limit.
Notes: Really an amazing daily, as it gathers the mobs together and maxes team DPS. The damage is pretty good and smolder on everything - so this is an excellent option for almost all dungeons. Oppressive force has the weakness of spreading the mobs out, so if you don’t have target limit issues, FI is the best option.
Maelstrom of Chaos (Spellstorm)
Effect: Creates a large pillar of lightning, doing moderate damage with no target limit in a small area. While casting you have high damage resistance and control immunity
When to use: The main reason for maelstrom is the control immunity. The damage is less than your other dailies
Notes: You can use this in PvP to break CC, of in ELOL to be immune to the prones. However, don’t expect much in the way of damage. It is really a utility daily.
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
30 - Features
The biggest problem with CW features is that too many of them are simply too good and we only have two slots. Critical Conflagration is a must, but after that we have many excellent options.
Orb of Imposition:
Effect: Increases control effects 75%
This is nice when you are in a tough spot, but we have features that add a lot of great personal and team DPS. That’s why we use control pets and dps features, because the best DPS pets are nothing compared to a DPS feature.
Arcane Presence:
Effect: Arcane stacks now apply to cold spells
The truth is with this build, we don’t build that many arcane stacks and get our buffs from other sources, so this is rather pointless.
Chilling Presence:
Effect: increases damage by 3% per chill stack.
What a great feature! This means with 6 stacks of chill, our damage is increased 18%, and since most things have chill stacks, this might be worth 10% personal DPS, but honestly we have better.
Evocation:
Effect: Increases AoE power damage by 15%
Similar to chilling presence, this is also a great feature. However we do have better ones.
Combustive Action (Master of Flame):
Effect: Every time you kill a monster you get action points. Also smolder and fire do 18% more damage.
When to use: When you can’t get enough AP.
CA can allow you to get your dailies up wicked fast, allowing you to spam oppressive force. However, we give up a good amount of persona DPS vs. Evocation or chilling presence or team DPS vs. Swath of destruction.
Storm Fury (Spellstorm):
Effect: Whenever you are under 50% hit points and you get hit, there is also an internal cooldown. However, the damage is quite good.
When to use: I have some friends testing it in PvP, where it is ok. It’s not enough damage for PvE.
Critical Conflagration (Master of Flame):
Effect: Critical hits now apply smolder, also add 15% critical severity.
When to use: All the time, quite literally.
Crit Conflag might be the best class feature in the game. You add smolder with every critical hit, and increases crit severity by 15% - which is better than a lesser vorpal. Considering we crit often and smolder is up to 30% of our DPS, this feature might make up one third of our DPS. It is far too good to pass up and you should never, ever take it off your bar.
Storm Spell (Spellstorm):
Effect: On critical hits there is a 30% chance to additionally do shock damage to the enemies
When to use: All the time.
Storm spell is a huge damage boost on critical hits. I believe this amounts to about 30-40% of DPS, meaning slotting this is a 50% dps increase. You should never take it off your bar.
Swath of Destruction (Master of Flame):
Effect: More Smolder Damage (45% i believe) and targets take more damage (15% i believe).
When to use: Every time you are not forced out of it
Swath is really an incredible dps boost - your personal DPS goes up at least 10% and team DPS goes up 15% (based on tooltip, hard to tell for real. If someone knows, let me know), making it’s really incredible because it debuffs for the whole team. The effect is very noticeable and your teammates will love you.
Many people love combustive action because of the AP gain, but if you are getting enough dailies (which you can do if you are built right) it becomes overkill.
Eye of the Storm (spellstorm):
Effect: have a chance to get 6 seconds of 100% crit chance. After that 6 seconds there is a 20 second cooldown.
When to use: All the time unless you take chillin advantage
Eye of the Storm is somewhere between excellent and amazing and is part of the core mechanic of the Spellstorm mage. This, in synergy with Storm Spell, is responsible for their insane burst damage. It is too good not to use.
The PvE Setup for features:
CWs are fortunate to have man great features, unlike many other classes. Almost all of those features have some usefulness. However, each paragon have two features that are simply the best under most circumstances.
Spellstorm: Eye of the Storm and Stormspell Master of Flame: Critical Conflagration and Swath of Destruction.
This setup typically allows you to maximize your effectiveness. Now this doesn’t mean you will NEVER use any other feature, but rather these are the features to use for PvE, unless something unusual is happening.
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
31 - Armor Sets:
First of all, something like your armor set is very important. Each set has a set bonus, which varies from near worthless to outstanding. I have personally tested most of these.
Some people wear 2+2 armor sets for an extra 450 power, or to inflate their gear. This is silly, as in terms of DPS the High Vizier set bonus is equivalent to at least 2000 power to everyone because of the strength of the debuff. The moral is, 2+2 is just plain bad.
When you see someone wearing 2+2, or has something stupid like 2500 lifesteal or whatever, it is just showing you that they have no fundamental understanding of the game. Maybe they have some skill, but this tends to be associated with an unpleasant, selfish personality. 2+2 is saying “I would rather look good than be good.” I have no patience for such people.
GG Set:
Champion Mage -
A set where the mastery slot recharges very fast, might be useful for fanning on tab. It’s the only set to have armor pen and the HP nice nice. However, this is only good for a starting set, as there are better options.
Tier One Sets:
Fatebender -
A set where your at wills will power up your encounters, but unlike a stormspell, our damage is mostly proc based, not encounter based, so a pretty meh power. The stats, it is heavy on regen and has no crit, so those aren’t good for us either
Focal Magi-
A t1 crit set, your control encounters can give 225 power and recovery to neary allies. The stats are fine, but the buff is a bit lackluster, amounting to 1-1.5% DPS. We have better options.
Archmage -
A set where your control powers reduce cooldowns. The bonus is nice, i have heard of a oppressor build where you can chain encounters very fast and become a freeze bot - but you would do no damage.
A set where there is deflect, regen, and no crit. the stats aren’t great for us, but it’s still the best T1 set.
T2 Sets -
High Vizier -
The set bonus will boost your defense and hurt the monster’s defense. It used to be 10% per stack, but i heard it was nerfed (someone please confirm). Still this set bonus is outstanding.
Because of the quality of the set bonus, HV is the best set for all CWs. However, sometimes it gimps the crit rating of a MoF too much. In that case the MoF should use Shadow Weaver.
A spellstorm should never wear anything other than high vizier. All other sets and all 2+2 combination are simply inferior.
Magelord -
A set with more power, regen, and no crit- the stats are not ideal. The set bonus gives you 900 recovery when you hit something with 75% of its hit points. Honestly though, if you have enough recovery, 900 will be barely noticeable. Hence this is the worst T2 set (I would much rather use archmage, which has a useful bonus).
Shadow Weaver -
With high defense and high crit, and no wasted stats, the Shadow Weaver armor set looks like it is made for Master of Flame. It is perfect for us. The set bonus, up to 18% crit severity and 400 lifesteal to your team, is very nice and stacks quickly in combat. The downside is that there is some sort of weird cooldown if you drop combat. That said, you should never drop combat and it should have an uptime of 50% or more.
So the high vizier has the best set bonus, but Shadow Weaver is good for MoFs that don’t have enough natural crit. Hence when you start, i would recommend farming the Shadow Weaver set, then after you have good gear and/or rerolled to a high charisma score, switch to high vizier.
Tier 2.5 Sets -
Fabled set -
The Fabled set has slightly more stats than high vizier, so you would think it would be better but know. I tested it and the set bonus boosts your DPS by a whole .3% or so. I thought it would be good in PvP, but no also, maybe 1-2%.
That said, it looks incredible and makes a good transmute.
Dread Legion -
This set will give you deflection, which is relatively useless, and likely make you way overstacked on lifesteal, though you could account for that by dropping lifesteal from everywhere else.
The set bonus is a small DoT that doesn’t proc often enough and takes too long to tick, it’s 125 damage per second, sometimes. It’s overall terrible.
Some of you who like evil looking CWs tho, really value this for it’s transmute. Personally, i think it looks like a bad skeletor costume.
Black Ice Gear:
Purified Set -
The ultimate set for survivability, with tons of defensive stats, tenacity, and lifesteal, but it seriously lowers your DPS.
This set would be my choice for PvP, so i could survive. In PvE, i would reserve it for very, very dangerous situations - such as when you are soloing a very hard dungeon. I would not use it regularly, as it gimps your DPS.
Corrupted Set -
I didn’t spend another 1500 zen and/or spend hours and hours and hours in IWD getting another set of gloves to test this. If I happen to somehow get lucky and get another pair of gloves, i will test that then. That said, the majority of CWs use purified for PvP and for difficult PvE, so I don’t see why you would also get this set.
Draconic Set -
This set costs you a ton of crit and recovery - which we need - and gives you a ton of armor penetration and lifesteal, which we normally don’t, though again i suppose you could change your jewelry and gems for that.
My teammates said the set bonus reduced their cooldowns maybe half a second to a second, which they barely noticed. This is because of how cooldowns are calculated. The formula is:
CD = C*100/(100 + x), where X is the recharge speed increase. This means the larger X is the less benefit you see. Also some spells (example, astral shield), have a limit where they can’t come off cooldown any faster. This is why, for example, stacking recovery to the sky is so ineffective.
Hence, i was pretty underwhelmed, though I did notice faster cooldowns. That said, if you want to use this set be sure to adjust your enchantments and jewelry to get some stat balance
So in short:
If you are spellstorm wear HV
If you are MoF wear SW if you need the crit and HV if you don’t
If you are that special archmage/oppressor build wear archmage
If you are in PvP wear purified
If you want to make some special Draconic build - it might be able to work.
It’s my impression that all other sets and combinations are salvage in comparison to these options.
For a more detailed discussion of HV vs. SW, see here:
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
32 - Artifact belts
Mod 4 and Mod 5 introduce artifact belts, which give bonus ability scores and stats. At legendary they have both a utility slot and a defense slot, making them incredibly powerful items.
There are four that we might consider.
Int belt
Wis belt
Charisma Belt
BI belt (Int/Cha)
The stats will vary, but you can min and max most stats well using enchantments and jewelry, so they aren’t a major differentiator.
For most CWs, with a bonus to damage and recharge, intelligence belt is the way to go and likely best in slot (this is what i use). The downside is this is often the most expensive belt. Of course, you have to refine all the belts and buy all the enchants and pets and artifacts, so the price difference isn’t huge in comparison to the value of a fully geared character. If not best for everyone, I think this is certainly best for thaumaturge.
With bonuses to recharge and AP gain, some CWs could consider the wisdom belt, however i would rather have straight up damage than some AP gain. That said, if you are purely a control control wizard, pure oppressor, this might be the way to go for that build specifically. (maybe the archmage/oppressor build).
Some renegades prefer the charisma belt, since chraisma will give both crit and combat advantage bonus - which is very important for the renegade build. While i understand this argument, I think mod 5 has a better option
The Black Ice belt is +2 int and +2 charisma with power, crit and arp - in other words a dream setup for a renegade. It is my thought this is BIS for renegades.
So in short, my thoughts:
Pure oppressor controler - Wis Belt
Thaumaturge - Int belt
Renegade - Black Ice Belt.
Renegades could consider completing the black ice set, since the black ice beholder also gives combat advantage damage, however i have no idea if that bonus is good or garbage.
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
33 - Artifact Cloaks.
Mod 5 gives us 3 artifact cloaks to choose from.
Now with a passive AP gain, power, crit, and armor pen, the BI cloak is obviously best in slot. These are dream stats for a CW.
The Golden Dragon cloak (in addition to looking cooler), has AP gain, power, crit and recovery. Recovery is less in demand for us than armor pen. In addition the BI belt (int/cha) is better than the dragon belt (str/wis). This set seems made for DCs.
Now the Seladine cloak and the Lethander cloak are defensive items, giving armor class instead of AP. It has always been my thought that AP gain is a core of CW gameplay.
However, all these items are spectacular, so if you get one you don’t want to use i suggest either selling it or trading for the one you want.
In addition, let’s remember we have no idea how rare these items will be, nor what their value will be yet. It is too early for us to judge.
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
34 - Weapons
When you start out you should probably just get the best purple you can get your hands on. Even a drake seal weapon is fine for the beginning. However, pretty soon you will want to upgrade.
Ancient Set -
These are nice weapons, found in Castle Never. Since the introduction of the other dungeons, their value has fallen and you might be able to get them relatively cheaply (about 200k as of this writing).
However, if you have skill, some AD, and a decent network of players, you should be able to farm better weapons for free.
Dread Legion Weapon Set -
A farmable starter set, found in the DD chest of VT. These weapons are nice and tend to have lifesteal. They are hardly the best in slot, but they are free and relatively easy to get.
The weapon damage is the same, personally i’d look at them and see what stats you would need. Personally, I like the draconic talisman for late game (crit, arp, HP), but the orb has a lot of deflection. The 2 set HP bonus is nice. The FD weapons tend to have more lifesteal and the fomorians have more power but regend and deflect, so there is a tradeoff there.
Any of these sets are nice, but right now the Fomorians and Fallen Dragon take a lot of effort. They require level 20 artificing, tools up to 100% quality, and 3 materials from either VT or MC that cost a fair amount of AD have a low drop rate for farming. I am not sure they are worth the effort.
The Draconic weapon is found from the DD chest in the Lair of Lostmauth, which takes a while to unlock and isn’t easy to complete. However, it does have the huge benefit of being free.
Artifact Weapons:
Which weapon is BIS is dependent on your spec.
The Gelid eye is probably best for Oppressors and PvPers, to freeze their targets more effectively (but is not ideal for PvE
The Chilling Eye is best for Thaumaturges and Renegades who like to use chilling cloud.
The Arcane Eye is best for Renegades that use magic missle
It really is as simple as that.
Now, there are artifact weapons for scorching burst and for storm pillar, however no one has ever used either of those as a main at will. Hence the purpose of these items is… collection points?
Artifact Offhand -
Mod 5 introduces an artifact offhand for our use. This item will give you a bonus when a class feature is slotted. Of the bonuses possible for the features we are using, the BIS for MoF is obvious:
Critical Conflagration feature will increase the crit chance of arcane or cold spells by 5%. considering it works on everything except fire abilities, of which there are 3 we seldom use, this is almost a flat 5% crit. This bonus is excellent and too good to pass up.
Between stormspell (5% chance for a second strike) and Eye of the storm (5% crit severity) the effective dps increase is similar. I suspect the crit severity one will win out.
Arcane Presence Feature - this feature says “you can 2% action points when you damage something with a cold spell” Now the way they calculate things in this game, each tick is a separate spell, so that means if you hit 10 things with icy terrain well, 20% AP PER TICK. If this works like it reads, it is obscenely overpowered.
UPDATE: Arcane presence offhand feature is working, however it doesn't work like the tooltip says (not surprising). It seems like it's a nice boost in AP, but maybe not enough to justify losing one of the great class features you are using.
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
35 - Artifacts:
CW has some rather incredible artifacts to use, but the downside is the best of the lot is either very difficult to obtain or very expensive.
BIS active - Sigil of the Devoted.
This artifact will recharge your AP. At legendary, it’s a free daily. which is truly amazing. Normally dailies will take around 30 seconds to get up and now we get an extra one every two minutes, which is amazingly impactful. I can’t tell you how wonderful this thing is.
The downside is you have to get a cleric, on your account, through the introduction of icewind dale. This is a substantial time commitment, and if you don’t like playing clerics, it might be rather unpleasant. In addition, DC is by far the slowest and most painful class to level, so while the benefit is great, the time cost is significant.
BIS Passive - Thayan book of the dead,
This artifact gives AP gain, crit, and armor pen. This means you are free to not socket armor pen, you get crit you need, and a significant AP gain boost (5.5% at legendary). A truly amazing artifact, even with just this, you can drop a bunch of recovery and still get your dailies up quickly.
The downside is that you either have to pull it from an unearthed lockbox or buy it off the auction house, where they can be very expensive.
BIS Passive 2 (Thaumaturge) - GWF
The artifact gains HP, Power, and armor pen. This lets us unsocket more armor pen, and gives us two stats without diminishing returns. Really a wonderful passive.
BIS Passive 2 (Renegade) - BI Beholder, Lantern or Kessel’s Spheres
This is due to the combat advantage bonus they give, which is a significant boost to renegade power. I would give the edge to the beholder because of the set, but the lantern is great as well.
If you don’t have sigil of the devoted or Book of the Dead, the lantern is a really outstanding free artifact for CWs and renegades in particular
Note on Mod 5 artifacts:
They aren’t yet on my collections page on preview, hence it is impossible to evaluate them. I will update this section once i get that information.
Other Artifacts -
Because acquiring the best lineup above is either costly in AD, time, or both (though leveling a GWF is a faceroll), you might not have access to these three artifacts, so what would you do then:
Start Artifacts -
Lantern of Revelation - Crit, Arp, Combat advantage.
Two stats we need and a bonus to armor pen is nice, and the effect isn’t half bad either. It’s a good option.
Waters - Def, Recovery Regen
The waters are good on just about every class, because (especially when undergeared), defense and recovery and nice, and the regen is a bonus. I don’t think taking waters or Lantern is a mistake, and if you want the other one they are relatively cheap on the AH.
Catalogue - Deflection, Movement, Gold Gain
About the worst stats you could imagine on an artifact. I can’t even understand the possibility of thinking this might be good.
PvP:
Bloodcrystal Skull - Recovery, Regen and stamina gain
The Stats are nice, but hardly our priority. The effect is the real highlight, bailing you out of a tough spot with temporary hit points. However, you will replace it with something better.
Dropped Artifacts:
These artifacts are rare, difficult to come by, and expensive. I would think carefully before investing in them.
Emblem of Seladine - Defense, Lifesteal, Companion Bonus
The stats are ok, the highlight is the effect, which helps the party out defensively. It used to be great in PvP, but has since been nerfed. I think we have many other, better options.
Eye of Lathander - Defense, Lifesteal, Incoming healing bonus.
Slightly better than the emblem, with the cool effect of resurrection at a distance. The downside is you need adamantane gauntlet, open the chest in a dread ring lair, and get very lucky. Considering there are better options and it’s a pain to farm, this really isn’t worth it.
Shard of Valindra’s Crown - Power, Lifesteal, Control bonus
The control bonus maxes out at 5.5%, which isn’t much, and we can get power and lifesteal easily elsewhere. Add that it is expensive with a low drop rate, and we have better options. Pre Mod 3 this was a high-end status symbol.
Lostmauth’s Horn - Power, Armor Pen, Control bonus.
Nice stats, but not as nice as the BIS options, because the control bonus is weak. It can drop (bound) in Lostmauth’s Lair, or from the boss. If you find it on the AH, it tends to be very expensive, at which point you should just buy the book.
BI Beholder - Recovery, Armor Pen, Combat Advantage bonus
Personally, i think this is a worse version of a lantern. If you get one, sell it.
Omegha’s Token of Movement - Defense, Deflect, Control Resist
Despite this is the token of my personal god, Defense Deflect and Control Resist? i think this is pretty pointless. If you get one, sell it.
Heart of the Dragon - Power, Defense, Regen.
If you bought the dragonborn pack, power and defense are great, and the regen is a good bonus. You will want to replace it eventually, but it’s not urgent.
Kessel’s Spheres - Power, Arp, Combat Advantage.
Depending on your crit, this might be better than the lantern, but i would personally sell it and get the book.
Black Ice Sphere - Recovery, Lifesteal, Control
A worse version of the already overrated crown. Sell it.
Rod of Imperial Restraint - Recovery, Lifesteal, Control
See above
Forgehammer of Gond - Power, Deflection, Control resist
If you have this you either sold it for a ton of AD or you are using it for professions, not stats.
Sigils:
These artifacts are gotten by getting a class to icewind dale. While it is a bit of a pain if that is the only reason, i like all the classes. Once you get them, they are an account-wide unlock.
Sigil of the Scourge - Power, Deflection, Stamina
If it was Power, Defense, Stamina it would be good. Deflection makes it meh.
Sigil of the Trickster - Crit, Deflection, Combat Advantage.
Like a lantern but worse. Next.
Hunter - Power, Recovery, Stamina.
Recovery is certainly better than deflection, and i like the stamina gain for sure. This isn’t a bad option, but you probably have better.
Guardian - Defense, Deflection, AOE resist.
Certainly you have better options than this.
Controller - Power, Crit, Control Resist.
The downside is that the control resist isn’t that much, but the upside is you will absolutely get this artifact Therefore i might use it temproarily until i got something better
Banners:
Banners come through the PvP campaign. I don’t PvP so I don’t have any, but they are certainly popular and useful in combat.
Defenders - Defense, Regen, Incoming healing.
You have many better options.
Tactician - Crit, Movement, AP gain.
If I had a banner, i’d take this. Crit is vital to us, AP gain is vital to us, and honestly i like the movement. The book is probably better (armor pen instead of movement), but this is a very nice option.
Vanguard - HP, Power, Lifesteal
This is like the budget GWF sigil, only we have lifesteal instead of arp. Since you could make up for it by switching your gems, these are very close, so another good option.
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
36 - Jewelry and Enchantments
This section is short because in all honesty, there is no best in slot item, rather there is something that gets you whatever you need most to help your character balance your stats.
When you are starting out, you can cheaply pick up the Hrimnir set, which gives you a boost to all your stats. Since you are undergeared, you need help everywhere So it’s ok.
Slightly better would be the jewelry from Malabog’s Castle or the Dread Ring campaign, which is +80 to everything except power and HP. Yes, late game, you stack power and HP, but that’s because everything else is at diminishing returns. If you are under diminishing returns, these are some free options to improve your stats.
The ancient rings you will come across farming Castle Never or buy them at the auction house. Only the (massively overrated) control rings are expensive. That’s because if you have decent equipment and artifacts, you will have enough crit and recovery naturally. The other ones are relatively inexpensive and let you boost target stats, which is eventually better than boosting all stats.
There are then some great rings that drop from the Lair of Lostmauth which you can use to min and max your stats. They are slightly more effective and more points than ancient rings, so I am currently using these.
If you have a cat, the belt of Xvim - HP, Power, Defense - is great, as these are the three stats that you probably won’t be hurting on diminishing returns.
Hence, you need to customize these things, and your enchants, to get you whatever statistics you need.
As to what you need, i gave you guidelines in the stats section, but these are just guidelines. You must adjust to what YOU need based upon what you are doing and how you play.
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
37 - Armor enchantments
Soulforged is the obvious choice here, as it lets you come back to life and recover from errors, lag spikes, and phone calls. There is no need to go more than a lesser, making it much more affordable than many other options.
Barkshield is a nice option as well, think of it as a damage sink on top of your HP - somewhat like temporary hit points. It makes it very hard to get one shot. The downside is that the shards are bound and annoying to farm (only the master of the hunt skirmish), making it substantially expensive.
Every other armor enchantment i’ve seen/tried/heard about is more for looking cool than working well. Sure, some tankier classes can make good use of these, but even with a high defense rating, your armor is still cloth.
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
38 - Weapon Enchantments
Class A:
The two best options here are Terror and Plaguefire. At Perfect Terror/GPF both apply about 4% personal DPS boost and 4% team dps boost (if the DPS is evenly distributed, about 24% of your personal dps). The reason why it is this is great on our CW is that we use as much AOE as possible, blanketing the entire room in the debuff, while other classes either have lower target caps, slower attack rates, smaller AOEs, or most likely, all three.
It is the nature of CW rotations to make CWs the best weapon enchant debuffers in the game. If you care about winning more than paingiver this is certainly the way to go.
Spellstorm Only - Perfect Vorpal. There has been some discussion from some sources that Perfect Vorpal is not WAI with Eye of the storm (a friend of mine will post an ACT parse of this soon). I have no idea if this is still true in mod 5. If Perfect Vorpal is WAI, it’s a Class A enchant for spellstorm, however if it is not it’s a Class B enchant.
Class B: Master of Flame - Perfect Vorpal - for the sake of this argument, i’m going to assume a good, but not great, crit chance of 35%. We are also going to assume 90% base severity, because we have critical conflagration slotted with 3 points.
This means we hit with 100% damage 65% of the time and 190% damage 35% of the time, for an average of 131.5% damage. With a perfect vorpal we hit 100% damage 65% of the time and 240% damage 35% of the time, or dealing out 149% damage. This is a (149/131.5) an increase of 13.3% DPS. When you add in the fact that assailant can’t crit, the real increase is somewhere on the order of 12% personal DPS. Now remember terror/plaguefire increases personal DPS 8%. So in order to use a vorpal 4% of your DPS must be greater than 4% of everyone else’s DPS put together. Since it is very, very unlikely that we are personally responsible for over 50% damage in the run, a vorpal is nowhere near as good as a terror or a plaguefire (though we will win paingiver).
Perfect Lightning - My friend Carla Valentine developed a special, custom P.Lighting MOF build whereby the enchantment increases her DPS around 19%, making it comperable to a terror or a plaguefire. She is not inclined to share the details of the build with us, but maybe that will change someday.
I personally tested a perfect lightning in Epic SOT, where it accounted for 6% of my DPS. However, ESOT has small mob groups, so i am not getting the full chain effect. If we were in Castle Never or Spellplague, we would expect to see a much larger DPS increase, but if we were single target we would expect to see a smaller DPS increase. That said, vorpal is probably better for less targets and lightning is probably better for more targets, though in most situations terror or plaguefire will be better options.
Class C - because you are so special and different!
These enhancements aren’t as good as the other ones, but might still be useful. They are Feytouched and Bronzewood (please see my enchantment guide for more information). If you are a super girly CW and want a pink orb, try the feytouched, it’s not bad. The bronzewood is also not bad, and i’ve seen it been effective in PvP, but its main advantage is the fact that it is cheap in comparison to other options.
I would be intrigued to see a perfect frost enchant. So if there is a MOF CW with a Perfect Frost, let’s run CN together, ok?
The other options really seem lackluster to the ones listed here, and would be more expensive and less good, so we shouldn’t consider them.
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
39 - Master of Flame Setup
This is a basic description of how to play master of Flame
Ok, so for our basic rotation we are going to run conduit of ice (mastery), shard of the endless avalanche, icy terrain, and steal time. The question people will be wondering at first is, why this bar?
So remember, a very large proportion of our damage is secondary abilities - that is assailant, smolder, rimfire smolder, creeping frost, and warped magic, can account for up to 50% of our damage output. The nice thing about this is that these DoTs can happen even if we are hanging out at the campfire and reading a book. So the way we want to proc as many of these secondary abilities as possible is we want to hit as many mobs as possible, as often as possible.
Secondly we want to add chill to as much as possible as often as possible since chill stacks will refresh our smolder DoT and keep it going longer. This bar allows us to accomplish both goals relatively easily and with all our encounters, leaving us to choose whatever encounter and positioning is best for the given situation.
A third wonderful thing is lifesteal. Most classes get lifesteal in bursts as they swing their encounters and then are lacking during cooldown, however with all these DoTs, a MoF CW has lifesteal that acts like the Jose Canseco of Regen, with enough steroids to go around. As you are dodging, kiting, casting, or reviving your squishy teammates, your life is healing back instantly. The wonderful benefit of this is outside of ESOT and ELOL where the mobs hit like trains, i basically never use potions.
The fourth wonderful thing is this is an amazing control bar. Two freeze spells, a group prone, and a group stun means that unless we pull a huge number of mobs, we can almost keep any monster permanently frozen. They just stand there while our team relentlessly beats them silly.
So let’s review the encounters quickly:
Conduit of ice mastery: Ticks 6 times to one primary target and 6 secondary targets adding chill (refreshing smolder) every tick
Icy Terrain - Ticks many times (forget how much, honestly) for about 10-12 seconds, unlimited target cap
Steal time - ticks 5 times over two seconds against 5 mobs, leaving them stunned.
Hence, say we pull 10 monsters and go through a rotation. That is 42 ticks from conduit, 10 hits from shard, 100 hits from icy terrain, and 25 hits from steal time, meaning we have hit them 177 times ( :O!!! ) in one rotation. Now when you consider that each hit can proc smolder, swath of destruction, our weapon enchantment, the wild hunt rider pet, and in addition can freeze/stun/prone, in the course of one rotation we have controlled and debuffed the entire room. If any survive our team will either beat them senseless or the the DoTs will tick tick tick away and the mobs will die. If they survive to our next rotation, we can just freeze/stun/prone again and they will die eventually anyway. This is why i find it relatively easy to solo epic dungeons on my CW - unless i pull a group way over my target cap i can keep them controlled relatively easily.
Your Features:
This is simple, critical conflagration is essential and quite honestly, a MoF CW is relatively worthless without it.
Secondly, i would slot swath of destruction, as it increases your damage and your teams damage substantially (maybe as much as a GPF enchantment). It is really, really good.
If for some reason you find yourself short on action points, you can slot combustive action - which is an excellent feature - instead of swath. The team DPS will be significantly less, but you will get more dailies. You must consider if the situation mandates this trade.
Your Dailies:
The two dailies are going to be Oppressive Force and Furious Immolation.
If there are less than 8 mobs, Furious Immolation is the key. It gathers all the mobs, does good damage, and adds smolder 100%. The reason why this is so important is that when the mobs are gathered, all your other abilities do more damage. If the 8 mobs are all in one point, and you connect with your rotation, it is likely all but the large elites will be dead.
If there are ever much more enemies, Oppressive force is the way to go. It ticks 5 (or 6) times and has no target limit, adding a substantial stun, and does good damage. If you are like me and prefer to pull door to door, or are short-manning draco, or any other situation when you are swarmed with adds, OF is key. The drawback is it spreads mobs out, making it harder to hit them with your AOEs, but often this can be solved by kiting.
At Will:
Chilling Cloud - if everything else is on cooldown, throw in a full rotation of chilling cloud, add a chill stack, hit 5 mobs, gain the 15% damage from FPT, and go back to your rotation. Because of the FPT (frozen power transfer) feat it’s important to finish the rotation if possible.
This is very rough and highly variable, but in general this is where your DPS will come from. Notice that 50% of your damage is indirect, versus almost every other class who deals damage in a direct way.
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
41 - The Dot and Kite Style (MoF/Thaum)
The core of the MoF playstyle is DoT and kite - this means that when we engage a group, we are going to target the largest mob first, hopefully hitting him with conduit of ice. We then fight along the side of the group, expending our rotation as we move. How if there is a high priority target that poses a danger to us (archers are the key example), we must hit them with something - normally icy terrain is plenty). So by now, many of the small mobs are dead and only a few are left, so we just keep moving to the next group, and so on. The monsters we leave chasing us will tick away and sometimes die, whereas we expend our rotation on larger groups, making the use of those encounters more efficient. Since we are an AOE class, CW single target DPS is actually quite poor and so we want to fight as many mobs as we possibly can.
Now, if for some reason, you can’t kite to the next group, you want to get the mobs to run at you in a relatively straight line so you can hit all of them. For you math people, this means that if the enemies are in a pseudo elliptical group, the best positioning is at the apex of the major axis on the end where there is most aggro. If there are a large number of them, you can drop oppressive force and they will actually run into it. If there is a smaller amount, you can gather them with furious immolation and then hit them with everything you have.
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
45 - Fighting Dragons
Dragons are special in Neverwinter now, and they have their own abilities. In general, they are more dangerous at the ends than the sides. The most dangerous part of a dragon is the tail, which can quickly swipe you and prone you. It is very difficult to see the animation, if there is even any animation.
The front end of the dragon is dangerous but less so, because you can see the animation of each attack. He can bite, play with you like a cat with his paw, or nose bump (which really hurts). However, this is not as dangerous as the tail, because it can’t prone you. Dragons also have a breath attack, with a many-hit knockback (very dangerous, especially if undergeared), or fireballs, which hurt and can have a prone, a AOE DOT, or both. Luckily these attacks are slow and easy to dodge.
The optimal place to fight is therefore under the wing, and weather at range (like Lostmauth) or close (like the dracolich), the best posistion is by the wing, slightly to the front. The reason why you want to be near the front is in case your teammate grabs aggro and turns him way to fast (a bad habit of TRs and GWFs), which can swing the tail at you quickly, prone you, and leave you vulnerable to many other attacks.
Dragons also have a wing flap, which will be two pumps and a flap, producing an AOE knockback, a second hit of falling damage, and can really mess up your rotation. If the flap is on a 3 count, you can dodge on a 2 count. Since you can dodge, you want to dodge into the dragon and continue your rotation like normal. This means you won’t be in a bad position, you won’t waste time running back to the fight, and you can keep the rhythm of your rotation.
In the dracolich fight, or similar fights where there a lot of adds (far more than 8), you want to fight on top of the boss and drop your oppressive force there. As you move from one side to the other, the trailing adds will move into your AOE control and start taking damage.
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
46 - Special Dangers
There are things we have to be aware of. In terms of damage, the innocuous archers have the ability to deal out a lot of damage to us because they have a high arp. Too many archers can eat your HP quickly.
A second source of damage is the whight’s lifesuck ability (either in a cone or circle), which ignores armor and ticks multiple times, sometimes even after you dodge. You need to get out ASAP.
Anything that can prone or stun us is especially dangerous. These include fireballs, hulk AOEs, witch’s black balls, dragon stuns, dragon wing flaps, spikes from above, the hellfire magus flame pillars from below, and others. You must always be cognascent of things that can stun you. Just like it is easy for our team to wail on stunned targets, it is also easy for their team to wail on you if you get stunned! If you avoid stuns and there is no lag, you should be able to survive almost anything, but any sort of chain stun will likely kill you.
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
47 - Individual Dungeons
Cloak Tower:
The only thing dangerous in here are the eyes of Gurugmesh (I can’t spell it), that have AOE prones. The rest of the mobs are painfully easy.
Cragmire Crypts:
The danger here is Tavern Blackdagger himself. He can teleport and his swings actually hit very hard. In that fight, if you are kiting him around, be sure to hit the archers on your way.
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
Throne of Idris:
A relatively easy dungeon, the real danger is Idris’s black stun balls. If you don’t get hit by them, you will be fine. The Direheims can hit pretty hard, but are slow and easy to dodge.
Lair of the Mad Dragon:
The hard part here are the Erinyes. They have an AOE heal, so your team must focus them down and kill them first, or else they will heal all that damage you already did. If you have a low team DPS, be sure to freeze/stun/prone them so they can’t use their heal.
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
The Gray Wolf Den:
Some of the monsters in here have AOE charge attacks with a knockback to them. You must avoid those as you make your way through. I found the clear very easy.
This boss is a nightmare for CW. If you watch her closely, the slow attacks she has are easy to dodge, but she has some quick attacks that are difficult. Her charge has a much shorter timing than the charges from the normal monsters elsewhere, so you must dodge immediately. The worse part is she periodically spawns shadow wolves that can one or two shot you - they are very painful.
So you have to get out of there quick and slam icy terrian. If the wolves aggro on you, you might not have casting time for OF or steal time. Personally, this fight i dropped shard for fanning the flame to increase DPS on the boss. Ray of Enfeeblement is also a great option here.
Incredibly difficult to solo, but if you have some space to pew pew you should be able to get some good DPS on her.
The Frozen Heart:
The issue in Frozen Heart are the golems - which you cannot control. They have a smash attack, which causes a brief prone, and an AOE chill attack, which freezes you. The wolves also have a freeze that does tons of damage, and like always, if the archers wail on you you’d be in trouble. I would be sure to dodge the AOEs first, drop IT on the archers second, and launch my rotation as i kite.
The clear wasn't so much hard as it was long, the golems have a lot of HP and you have to fight the first boss 3 times. With a full team, it goes much much faster.
Hrimnir’s attack do tons of damage and can freeze and knock you back, so you must dodge them. Luckily, all his attacks are slow so if you watch your feet you shouldn’t have an issue.
In a full team, if you aren't geared the idea situation is to have someone kite (i've done it on GWF, GF, CW, DC). If the kiter doesn't have the regen/lifesteal/potions/etc to take the arrow shots, you can have someone take out the archers. A HR seems idea here, but a CW can make due to.
The rest of the team can attack the boss. His attacks do hurt but he is painfully slow. The spikes from the ground appear with plenty of time, his axe takes forever, and he throws an iceball with a charge.
Hrimnir has a good amount of life, so keep fighting and he will go down. A great way to burn him is a TR stacking wicked reminder.
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
The Lair of the Pirate King:
Very much like the wolf den, there are monsters with AOE charge attacks you must dodge, else get knocked back. That’s really the only challenge, as the rest of the encounters are things you have seen before.
The boss acts like a whight with a lifesuck attack, so you must stay out of his AOE.
In all honesty, this dungeon is a faceroll. Cragmire Crypts is harder. My response when i was soloing was "is this even epic"
Note: Blue followed behind me to get chests and enchants. She didn't help me fight along the way.
Spellplague Caverns:
The clear itself isn’t bad, but you have a lot of AOEs to dodge, as most of them come with a stun or a knockback. If you have fleet footwork though, the monsters themselves are slow and predictable. If your team is struggling, slow down.
The amount of stuns in this dungeon is really the problem. If you have issues, just slow down and pull less. If you run out of stamina and you get chain stunned, you're dead.
The last fight really isn’t so bad, but you do have to stay out of their AOEs. You can’t control the adds so they will be clouding up your screen. Personally i tilt my camera way up and watch my feet. Remember that the floor falls as you fight and you will be fine.
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
Temple of the Spider:
Monsters here hit hard, but luckily there aren’t many prones, stuns or knockbacks, though some webs can root you. I mostly just kite to the dirders and blow everything up on them.
The challenge in this dungeon is the web attack. You won't be able to move or dodge well, leaving you vulnerable to painful things like blademasters and driders, so watch you feet. Also, unlike almost every other control effect soulforge does NOT free you from web, so chain death is a serious risk. If you pull smaller, the clear isn't that bad.
Syndyrth can heal herself, so you can drop your daily when that happens to prevent the heal. If you surround her, she will not port and it will make the fight much easier.
Note: Syndyrth seems impossible for me to solo, as i don't have the single target DPS to out damage her heals. She is actually pretty easy in a group, however. I heard that a Fury SW can solo her with TT - but remember SW have really great single target DPS, and CW DPS is almost all AOE.
Caverns of Karrundax:
This dungeon has been nerfed so much, but in general it just long with a lot of fire attacks. There are (no longer) many prones or knockbacks, but the mobs here can be hard to control and can really hurt you. That said, if you take it one encounter at a time, the clear is easy.
Pyraphenia is actually more difficult than Karrundax. If you get past the first boss, the other two are relatively easy. There is, however, a lot of red on the ground, so it's important to watch you feet.
Now, there are many encounters you can sneak by. I learned the hard way while soloing that THESE ENCOUNTERS ARE MUCH MORE DIFFICULT THAN THE BOSSES. Forgecallers, especially in multiples, are very dangerous and take a long time to kill. There was once I was fighting two forgecallers and then got ambushed by two magma brutes. I died and I don't know where those brutes went. This is why groups sneak around these encounters. (Also might be why cryptic hasn't forced you to kill them).
The dragon is also relatively easy as he is predictable and doesn’t have much HP. The danger is the hurlers (their version of archers), so kite around and catch them if they are giving you an issue. She was actually surprisingly easy. You can kite the adds, catch the kobolds with steal time and icy terrain, the wyrmlings are painfully slow and easy to dodge. The danger is karrundax's fireball, which is indicated by the GIANT RED CIRCLE ON THE GROUND.
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
The Dread Vault:
The clear is very long with lots of stuns from mindflayers and a suck and prone from the thoons. These are very dangerous, so if you have any issues, slow down and pull one by one.
The last boss is a real pain, but in epic you can go to the back corner and take the adds little by little. Once the adds are clear you can hit the boss, but expect a very long fight.
At ⅔ and ⅓ health, he will spawn a boss from another dungeon (not kidding), with all of his adds that can freeze and stun you (also not kidding).
I soloed normal dread vault once and I beat epic dread vault once per class, and that’s it. I really dread this place.
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
Castle Never:
An ideal dungeon for us, as it is basically a giant AOE fest. In section one, the clear is easy except for the hallway of death (prone to lag spikes) and the spitters just before the spider. The spider himself isn’t difficult.
In section two, we now have some red wizards and archers, which are obnoxious, but if we can hit the archers early, then stay out of the red, we should be fine.
The beholder has some big AOE stuns that are very long. Getting hit can sometimes mean death, but luckily his HP is low and he melts very quickly. The skullcleavers that spawn hit hard, but are easily killed and controlled.
In section 3, the clear to the shadowfell is easy. In the shadowfell, the pulls after the traps must be taken one by one as the monsters can really hurt and the witches can stun you. However, if you don’t overpull, you should be fine.
Xivros is relatively easy, as his attacks are slow and predictable. The issue is the wights and his AOE personal lifesuck, which is extremely painful. If you stay out of that the fight shouldn’t be back.
Section four clear is more of the same - wizards, archers, whights, skeletons, zombies, and one cube. Personally i like to pull everything and blow it up That said nothing here is too bad and if we drop IT and OF on our way through we should be fine.
The dracolich is just a dragon with a ton of adds, and adds you’ve already faced. Follow the dragon strategy above. However, there are hands that erupt from the ground you must dodge. You can also dodge them on a 2 count, so if there is no lag, you can get into a rhythm and timing and it’s easy.
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
Malabog’s Castle:
A long clear with some difficult mobs that really hit hard, it’s more of the same. By the time you get here and you’ve done the other dungeons, it should be nothing to bad for you to handle. If you are a relatively new player, do something else first.
Fulminorax has some dangerous AOEs to dodge, but that's not the real danger. Periodically Valindra will port down and either choke a teammate or summon a portal that produces whights. If she comes down the team must target switch and nuke her before she can accomplish her goal. If you fail, either your teammate will die or you will get a portal which constantly spawns whights, which can eventually overwhelm you.
At ⅓ and ⅔ hp, Fulminorax will fly and spray lightning at you. It really hurts, so walk to a clear area and make sure you don’t get hit.
Valindra’s Tower:
The clear is a very basic, and imo, obnoxious AOE fest.
Valindra herself isn’t very bad, but in phase two she will occasionally grab a teammate with a phantom hand, which you must kill to set them free. If the caskets spawn, each team member has an area to stop them from spawning. If you fail they produce dangerous whights.
At ⅓ and ⅔ health, There will be an intermission with ghosts and lightning. This hurts a TON (one shots most people), and hence you must stay out of it. If the team goes in the same direction, it is pretty easy.
In the last phase she will spawn a ton of caskets. You can either try to close one round and then burn her or just burn her from the beginning. Either way, you must have the DPS to take her out before you are overwhelmed
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
Epic Shores of Turen:
The clear itself is inelegant, but the monsters here can easily one-shot most CWs, so mustn't overpull and be careful.
The boss fight is obnoxious, he has 3 attacks. A fireball (slow and easy to dodge), a firebreath (slow and easy to dodge) and dancing flames (quick and hard to dodge). Hopefully you have a tank drawing his aggro so you don’t have to dodge the dancing flames, but if you don’t you should just study his animation carefully until you get his animation down - but i am warning you, it’s quite difficult.
chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited November 2014
Epic Lair of Lostmauth:
The clear is pretty straight forward, but the mobs hit extremely hard and can kill you quickly.
The first boss fight is single (or dual) target, so just stay back and try to do as much DPS as possible.
The second boss fight is two scorpions, which typically one person kites one away while the team kills the other, then wails on the remainder. Their attacks are slow and easy to dodge, but the real threat is fire from the sky, which is easy to miss.
Lostmauth himself is easier than the scorpions, IMO. It is a single target fight, so follow the dragon strategy and stay at distance. Watch your feet for the spikes and the air for the fireballs and his AOE, but you have the space to dodge. At the intermission, take a corner and step into the middle if there is an AOE under you. Finally he will die, which doesn’t take too long, and if you are lucky you will pull a belt.
Comments
Effect: Nuke spell that can hit two targets. More damage if you target two different mobs. About the same as chill strike.
Mastery: Damage increased 50%
When to use: Single target fights.
Notes: A great spell that you actually can’t spec into at first (you have to take the other options), but is nice when you need it.
Steal Time:
Effect: Hits mobs for five ticks each, each tick applying slow, final tick hits harder and applies stun.
Mastery: Now creates combat advantage and increases run speed for team.
When to use: All the time except single target fights.
Notes: Steal time is incredible, does good damage, has a long stun, and procs all your feats and abilities. On Mastery, it is mostly to mess with your teammates, as it throws off their timing, which is potentially hilarious.
Shard of the Endless Avalanche:
Effect: Summons a big pall of power, which can be pushed (twice). The ball will slam and prone (one target at a time), then finally explode (ten seconds or when you hit two targets at once), which deals additional damage and prones. The target limit on the explosion is 10, not 5, not 15 (testing by me), but can prone more (testing by Carla Valentine).
Mastery: You can now summon and move the shard wherever you want.
When to use: Whenever you are fighting enough mobs to make use of the control.
Notes: The community is down on shard right now, because a recent nerf took most of its damage away. There is a rumor that it only prones 5 targets (obviously wrong). I confirmed the target limit for damage today and I’m trusting the word of my good friend for larger limits - which are often hard to see in dungeons.
So if you are like me and like to do big pulls - shard is still a lifesaver. Don’t listen to the detractors, this spell is still good.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
I have said over and over again that AP gain is important for CWs, and it might be the most important stat. This is not because CW dailies do tons of damage (even though the damage is good), but because CW dailies impose tons of control on the mobs. There are times when if you cast your daily, everything is fine, but if you miss your daily, the party wipes. That’s how important CW dailies are.
After they nerfed Sing, MoF CW is down to four effective dailies, all of which are great abilities and have their uses.
Ice Storm:
Effect: A burst effect, add chill stacks and knockback. Hits very hard (target limit 5).
When to use: GG PvP (what a blast!), situations where you have 2-5 mobs, particularly those who are control immune. A great example is LOL where you have encounters of 5 or less, several immune to control.
Notes: The knockback normally is bad for the party, so this daily has very limited uses, but is very nice in those situations.
Arcane Singularity:
Effect: Gathers mobs up into a singularity in the sky, then drops them. Effect is somewhat slow (target limit 8)
When to use: After the nerf (used to be 15 targets), Furious Immolation is better than Singularity in every way.
Notes: this spell used to be amazing, as you could gather the mobs and everyone could wail on them. Back in mod 0, CW job was to keep the singularity in the sky so everyone else could do their jobs. Those days are gone.
Oppressive Force:
Effect: Creates an oppressive force, ticks multiple times, stuns all the mobs, no target limit
When to use: Anytime there are greater than 8 mobs.
Notes: OF is amazing right now. When your AP gain is high enough you can do large pulls and solo dungeons and whatnot, all because of Oppressive Force.
Ice Knife:
Effect: A single target nuke, adds chill stack, prone effect
When to use: Any single target fight.
Notes: Ice Knife has the highest damage of any daily, but only affects one target. If you are facing 2-5 targets, ice storm is better, if it’s 6-8 targets, Furious immolation is better, and if it’s over 8 targets the Oppressive Force
Furious Immolation (Master of Flame):
Effect: Gathers all the mobs together, quickly. Does good damage and adds smolder (target limit 8).
When to use: Any dungeon or situation where you are under the target limit.
Notes: Really an amazing daily, as it gathers the mobs together and maxes team DPS. The damage is pretty good and smolder on everything - so this is an excellent option for almost all dungeons. Oppressive force has the weakness of spreading the mobs out, so if you don’t have target limit issues, FI is the best option.
Maelstrom of Chaos (Spellstorm)
Effect: Creates a large pillar of lightning, doing moderate damage with no target limit in a small area. While casting you have high damage resistance and control immunity
When to use: The main reason for maelstrom is the control immunity. The damage is less than your other dailies
Notes: You can use this in PvP to break CC, of in ELOL to be immune to the prones. However, don’t expect much in the way of damage. It is really a utility daily.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
The biggest problem with CW features is that too many of them are simply too good and we only have two slots. Critical Conflagration is a must, but after that we have many excellent options.
Orb of Imposition:
Effect: Increases control effects 75%
This is nice when you are in a tough spot, but we have features that add a lot of great personal and team DPS. That’s why we use control pets and dps features, because the best DPS pets are nothing compared to a DPS feature.
Arcane Presence:
Effect: Arcane stacks now apply to cold spells
The truth is with this build, we don’t build that many arcane stacks and get our buffs from other sources, so this is rather pointless.
Chilling Presence:
Effect: increases damage by 3% per chill stack.
What a great feature! This means with 6 stacks of chill, our damage is increased 18%, and since most things have chill stacks, this might be worth 10% personal DPS, but honestly we have better.
Evocation:
Effect: Increases AoE power damage by 15%
Similar to chilling presence, this is also a great feature. However we do have better ones.
Combustive Action (Master of Flame):
Effect: Every time you kill a monster you get action points. Also smolder and fire do 18% more damage.
When to use: When you can’t get enough AP.
CA can allow you to get your dailies up wicked fast, allowing you to spam oppressive force. However, we give up a good amount of persona DPS vs. Evocation or chilling presence or team DPS vs. Swath of destruction.
Storm Fury (Spellstorm):
Effect: Whenever you are under 50% hit points and you get hit, there is also an internal cooldown. However, the damage is quite good.
When to use: I have some friends testing it in PvP, where it is ok. It’s not enough damage for PvE.
Critical Conflagration (Master of Flame):
Effect: Critical hits now apply smolder, also add 15% critical severity.
When to use: All the time, quite literally.
Crit Conflag might be the best class feature in the game. You add smolder with every critical hit, and increases crit severity by 15% - which is better than a lesser vorpal. Considering we crit often and smolder is up to 30% of our DPS, this feature might make up one third of our DPS. It is far too good to pass up and you should never, ever take it off your bar.
Storm Spell (Spellstorm):
Effect: On critical hits there is a 30% chance to additionally do shock damage to the enemies
When to use: All the time.
Storm spell is a huge damage boost on critical hits. I believe this amounts to about 30-40% of DPS, meaning slotting this is a 50% dps increase. You should never take it off your bar.
Swath of Destruction (Master of Flame):
Effect: More Smolder Damage (45% i believe) and targets take more damage (15% i believe).
When to use: Every time you are not forced out of it
Swath is really an incredible dps boost - your personal DPS goes up at least 10% and team DPS goes up 15% (based on tooltip, hard to tell for real. If someone knows, let me know), making it’s really incredible because it debuffs for the whole team. The effect is very noticeable and your teammates will love you.
Many people love combustive action because of the AP gain, but if you are getting enough dailies (which you can do if you are built right) it becomes overkill.
Eye of the Storm (spellstorm):
Effect: have a chance to get 6 seconds of 100% crit chance. After that 6 seconds there is a 20 second cooldown.
When to use: All the time unless you take chillin advantage
Eye of the Storm is somewhere between excellent and amazing and is part of the core mechanic of the Spellstorm mage. This, in synergy with Storm Spell, is responsible for their insane burst damage. It is too good not to use.
The PvE Setup for features:
CWs are fortunate to have man great features, unlike many other classes. Almost all of those features have some usefulness. However, each paragon have two features that are simply the best under most circumstances.
Spellstorm: Eye of the Storm and Stormspell
Master of Flame: Critical Conflagration and Swath of Destruction.
This setup typically allows you to maximize your effectiveness. Now this doesn’t mean you will NEVER use any other feature, but rather these are the features to use for PvE, unless something unusual is happening.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
First of all, something like your armor set is very important. Each set has a set bonus, which varies from near worthless to outstanding. I have personally tested most of these.
Some people wear 2+2 armor sets for an extra 450 power, or to inflate their gear. This is silly, as in terms of DPS the High Vizier set bonus is equivalent to at least 2000 power to everyone because of the strength of the debuff. The moral is, 2+2 is just plain bad.
When you see someone wearing 2+2, or has something stupid like 2500 lifesteal or whatever, it is just showing you that they have no fundamental understanding of the game. Maybe they have some skill, but this tends to be associated with an unpleasant, selfish personality. 2+2 is saying “I would rather look good than be good.” I have no patience for such people.
GG Set:
Champion Mage -
A set where the mastery slot recharges very fast, might be useful for fanning on tab. It’s the only set to have armor pen and the HP nice nice. However, this is only good for a starting set, as there are better options.
Tier One Sets:
Fatebender -
A set where your at wills will power up your encounters, but unlike a stormspell, our damage is mostly proc based, not encounter based, so a pretty meh power. The stats, it is heavy on regen and has no crit, so those aren’t good for us either
Focal Magi-
A t1 crit set, your control encounters can give 225 power and recovery to neary allies. The stats are fine, but the buff is a bit lackluster, amounting to 1-1.5% DPS. We have better options.
Archmage -
A set where your control powers reduce cooldowns. The bonus is nice, i have heard of a oppressor build where you can chain encounters very fast and become a freeze bot - but you would do no damage.
A set where there is deflect, regen, and no crit. the stats aren’t great for us, but it’s still the best T1 set.
T2 Sets -
High Vizier -
The set bonus will boost your defense and hurt the monster’s defense. It used to be 10% per stack, but i heard it was nerfed (someone please confirm). Still this set bonus is outstanding.
Because of the quality of the set bonus, HV is the best set for all CWs. However, sometimes it gimps the crit rating of a MoF too much. In that case the MoF should use Shadow Weaver.
A spellstorm should never wear anything other than high vizier. All other sets and all 2+2 combination are simply inferior.
Magelord -
A set with more power, regen, and no crit- the stats are not ideal. The set bonus gives you 900 recovery when you hit something with 75% of its hit points. Honestly though, if you have enough recovery, 900 will be barely noticeable. Hence this is the worst T2 set (I would much rather use archmage, which has a useful bonus).
Shadow Weaver -
With high defense and high crit, and no wasted stats, the Shadow Weaver armor set looks like it is made for Master of Flame. It is perfect for us. The set bonus, up to 18% crit severity and 400 lifesteal to your team, is very nice and stacks quickly in combat. The downside is that there is some sort of weird cooldown if you drop combat. That said, you should never drop combat and it should have an uptime of 50% or more.
So the high vizier has the best set bonus, but Shadow Weaver is good for MoFs that don’t have enough natural crit. Hence when you start, i would recommend farming the Shadow Weaver set, then after you have good gear and/or rerolled to a high charisma score, switch to high vizier.
Tier 2.5 Sets -
Fabled set -
The Fabled set has slightly more stats than high vizier, so you would think it would be better but know. I tested it and the set bonus boosts your DPS by a whole .3% or so. I thought it would be good in PvP, but no also, maybe 1-2%.
That said, it looks incredible and makes a good transmute.
Dread Legion -
This set will give you deflection, which is relatively useless, and likely make you way overstacked on lifesteal, though you could account for that by dropping lifesteal from everywhere else.
The set bonus is a small DoT that doesn’t proc often enough and takes too long to tick, it’s 125 damage per second, sometimes. It’s overall terrible.
Some of you who like evil looking CWs tho, really value this for it’s transmute. Personally, i think it looks like a bad skeletor costume.
Black Ice Gear:
Purified Set -
The ultimate set for survivability, with tons of defensive stats, tenacity, and lifesteal, but it seriously lowers your DPS.
This set would be my choice for PvP, so i could survive. In PvE, i would reserve it for very, very dangerous situations - such as when you are soloing a very hard dungeon. I would not use it regularly, as it gimps your DPS.
Corrupted Set -
I didn’t spend another 1500 zen and/or spend hours and hours and hours in IWD getting another set of gloves to test this. If I happen to somehow get lucky and get another pair of gloves, i will test that then. That said, the majority of CWs use purified for PvP and for difficult PvE, so I don’t see why you would also get this set.
Draconic Set -
This set costs you a ton of crit and recovery - which we need - and gives you a ton of armor penetration and lifesteal, which we normally don’t, though again i suppose you could change your jewelry and gems for that.
My teammates said the set bonus reduced their cooldowns maybe half a second to a second, which they barely noticed. This is because of how cooldowns are calculated. The formula is:
CD = C*100/(100 + x), where X is the recharge speed increase. This means the larger X is the less benefit you see. Also some spells (example, astral shield), have a limit where they can’t come off cooldown any faster. This is why, for example, stacking recovery to the sky is so ineffective.
Hence, i was pretty underwhelmed, though I did notice faster cooldowns. That said, if you want to use this set be sure to adjust your enchantments and jewelry to get some stat balance
So in short:
If you are spellstorm wear HV
If you are MoF wear SW if you need the crit and HV if you don’t
If you are that special archmage/oppressor build wear archmage
If you are in PvP wear purified
If you want to make some special Draconic build - it might be able to work.
It’s my impression that all other sets and combinations are salvage in comparison to these options.
For a more detailed discussion of HV vs. SW, see here:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?774701-Chem-s-HV-v-SW-comparison-(MOF-THAUM-MOD-4)
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
Mod 4 and Mod 5 introduce artifact belts, which give bonus ability scores and stats. At legendary they have both a utility slot and a defense slot, making them incredibly powerful items.
There are four that we might consider.
Int belt
Wis belt
Charisma Belt
BI belt (Int/Cha)
The stats will vary, but you can min and max most stats well using enchantments and jewelry, so they aren’t a major differentiator.
For most CWs, with a bonus to damage and recharge, intelligence belt is the way to go and likely best in slot (this is what i use). The downside is this is often the most expensive belt. Of course, you have to refine all the belts and buy all the enchants and pets and artifacts, so the price difference isn’t huge in comparison to the value of a fully geared character. If not best for everyone, I think this is certainly best for thaumaturge.
With bonuses to recharge and AP gain, some CWs could consider the wisdom belt, however i would rather have straight up damage than some AP gain. That said, if you are purely a control control wizard, pure oppressor, this might be the way to go for that build specifically. (maybe the archmage/oppressor build).
Some renegades prefer the charisma belt, since chraisma will give both crit and combat advantage bonus - which is very important for the renegade build. While i understand this argument, I think mod 5 has a better option
The Black Ice belt is +2 int and +2 charisma with power, crit and arp - in other words a dream setup for a renegade. It is my thought this is BIS for renegades.
So in short, my thoughts:
Pure oppressor controler - Wis Belt
Thaumaturge - Int belt
Renegade - Black Ice Belt.
Renegades could consider completing the black ice set, since the black ice beholder also gives combat advantage damage, however i have no idea if that bonus is good or garbage.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
Mod 5 gives us 3 artifact cloaks to choose from.
Now with a passive AP gain, power, crit, and armor pen, the BI cloak is obviously best in slot. These are dream stats for a CW.
The Golden Dragon cloak (in addition to looking cooler), has AP gain, power, crit and recovery. Recovery is less in demand for us than armor pen. In addition the BI belt (int/cha) is better than the dragon belt (str/wis). This set seems made for DCs.
Now the Seladine cloak and the Lethander cloak are defensive items, giving armor class instead of AP. It has always been my thought that AP gain is a core of CW gameplay.
However, all these items are spectacular, so if you get one you don’t want to use i suggest either selling it or trading for the one you want.
In addition, let’s remember we have no idea how rare these items will be, nor what their value will be yet. It is too early for us to judge.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
When you start out you should probably just get the best purple you can get your hands on. Even a drake seal weapon is fine for the beginning. However, pretty soon you will want to upgrade.
Ancient Set -
These are nice weapons, found in Castle Never. Since the introduction of the other dungeons, their value has fallen and you might be able to get them relatively cheaply (about 200k as of this writing).
However, if you have skill, some AD, and a decent network of players, you should be able to farm better weapons for free.
Dread Legion Weapon Set -
A farmable starter set, found in the DD chest of VT. These weapons are nice and tend to have lifesteal. They are hardly the best in slot, but they are free and relatively easy to get.
Fomorian Weapons, Fallen Dragon Weapons, Draconic Weapons -
The weapon damage is the same, personally i’d look at them and see what stats you would need. Personally, I like the draconic talisman for late game (crit, arp, HP), but the orb has a lot of deflection. The 2 set HP bonus is nice. The FD weapons tend to have more lifesteal and the fomorians have more power but regend and deflect, so there is a tradeoff there.
Any of these sets are nice, but right now the Fomorians and Fallen Dragon take a lot of effort. They require level 20 artificing, tools up to 100% quality, and 3 materials from either VT or MC that cost a fair amount of AD have a low drop rate for farming. I am not sure they are worth the effort.
The Draconic weapon is found from the DD chest in the Lair of Lostmauth, which takes a while to unlock and isn’t easy to complete. However, it does have the huge benefit of being free.
Artifact Weapons:
Which weapon is BIS is dependent on your spec.
The Gelid eye is probably best for Oppressors and PvPers, to freeze their targets more effectively (but is not ideal for PvE
The Chilling Eye is best for Thaumaturges and Renegades who like to use chilling cloud.
The Arcane Eye is best for Renegades that use magic missle
It really is as simple as that.
Now, there are artifact weapons for scorching burst and for storm pillar, however no one has ever used either of those as a main at will. Hence the purpose of these items is… collection points?
Artifact Offhand -
Mod 5 introduces an artifact offhand for our use. This item will give you a bonus when a class feature is slotted. Of the bonuses possible for the features we are using, the BIS for MoF is obvious:
Critical Conflagration feature will increase the crit chance of arcane or cold spells by 5%. considering it works on everything except fire abilities, of which there are 3 we seldom use, this is almost a flat 5% crit. This bonus is excellent and too good to pass up.
Between stormspell (5% chance for a second strike) and Eye of the storm (5% crit severity) the effective dps increase is similar. I suspect the crit severity one will win out.
Arcane Presence Feature - this feature says “you can 2% action points when you damage something with a cold spell” Now the way they calculate things in this game, each tick is a separate spell, so that means if you hit 10 things with icy terrain well, 20% AP PER TICK. If this works like it reads, it is obscenely overpowered.
UPDATE: Arcane presence offhand feature is working, however it doesn't work like the tooltip says (not surprising). It seems like it's a nice boost in AP, but maybe not enough to justify losing one of the great class features you are using.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
CW has some rather incredible artifacts to use, but the downside is the best of the lot is either very difficult to obtain or very expensive.
BIS active - Sigil of the Devoted.
This artifact will recharge your AP. At legendary, it’s a free daily. which is truly amazing. Normally dailies will take around 30 seconds to get up and now we get an extra one every two minutes, which is amazingly impactful. I can’t tell you how wonderful this thing is.
The downside is you have to get a cleric, on your account, through the introduction of icewind dale. This is a substantial time commitment, and if you don’t like playing clerics, it might be rather unpleasant. In addition, DC is by far the slowest and most painful class to level, so while the benefit is great, the time cost is significant.
BIS Passive - Thayan book of the dead,
This artifact gives AP gain, crit, and armor pen. This means you are free to not socket armor pen, you get crit you need, and a significant AP gain boost (5.5% at legendary). A truly amazing artifact, even with just this, you can drop a bunch of recovery and still get your dailies up quickly.
The downside is that you either have to pull it from an unearthed lockbox or buy it off the auction house, where they can be very expensive.
BIS Passive 2 (Thaumaturge) - GWF
The artifact gains HP, Power, and armor pen. This lets us unsocket more armor pen, and gives us two stats without diminishing returns. Really a wonderful passive.
BIS Passive 2 (Renegade) - BI Beholder, Lantern or Kessel’s Spheres
This is due to the combat advantage bonus they give, which is a significant boost to renegade power. I would give the edge to the beholder because of the set, but the lantern is great as well.
If you don’t have sigil of the devoted or Book of the Dead, the lantern is a really outstanding free artifact for CWs and renegades in particular
Note on Mod 5 artifacts:
They aren’t yet on my collections page on preview, hence it is impossible to evaluate them. I will update this section once i get that information.
Other Artifacts -
Because acquiring the best lineup above is either costly in AD, time, or both (though leveling a GWF is a faceroll), you might not have access to these three artifacts, so what would you do then:
Start Artifacts -
Lantern of Revelation - Crit, Arp, Combat advantage.
Two stats we need and a bonus to armor pen is nice, and the effect isn’t half bad either. It’s a good option.
Waters - Def, Recovery Regen
The waters are good on just about every class, because (especially when undergeared), defense and recovery and nice, and the regen is a bonus. I don’t think taking waters or Lantern is a mistake, and if you want the other one they are relatively cheap on the AH.
Catalogue - Deflection, Movement, Gold Gain
About the worst stats you could imagine on an artifact. I can’t even understand the possibility of thinking this might be good.
PvP:
Bloodcrystal Skull - Recovery, Regen and stamina gain
The Stats are nice, but hardly our priority. The effect is the real highlight, bailing you out of a tough spot with temporary hit points. However, you will replace it with something better.
Dropped Artifacts:
These artifacts are rare, difficult to come by, and expensive. I would think carefully before investing in them.
Emblem of Seladine - Defense, Lifesteal, Companion Bonus
The stats are ok, the highlight is the effect, which helps the party out defensively. It used to be great in PvP, but has since been nerfed. I think we have many other, better options.
Eye of Lathander - Defense, Lifesteal, Incoming healing bonus.
Slightly better than the emblem, with the cool effect of resurrection at a distance. The downside is you need adamantane gauntlet, open the chest in a dread ring lair, and get very lucky. Considering there are better options and it’s a pain to farm, this really isn’t worth it.
Shard of Valindra’s Crown - Power, Lifesteal, Control bonus
The control bonus maxes out at 5.5%, which isn’t much, and we can get power and lifesteal easily elsewhere. Add that it is expensive with a low drop rate, and we have better options. Pre Mod 3 this was a high-end status symbol.
Lostmauth’s Horn - Power, Armor Pen, Control bonus.
Nice stats, but not as nice as the BIS options, because the control bonus is weak. It can drop (bound) in Lostmauth’s Lair, or from the boss. If you find it on the AH, it tends to be very expensive, at which point you should just buy the book.
BI Beholder - Recovery, Armor Pen, Combat Advantage bonus
Personally, i think this is a worse version of a lantern. If you get one, sell it.
Omegha’s Token of Movement - Defense, Deflect, Control Resist
Despite this is the token of my personal god, Defense Deflect and Control Resist? i think this is pretty pointless. If you get one, sell it.
Heart of the Dragon - Power, Defense, Regen.
If you bought the dragonborn pack, power and defense are great, and the regen is a good bonus. You will want to replace it eventually, but it’s not urgent.
Kessel’s Spheres - Power, Arp, Combat Advantage.
Depending on your crit, this might be better than the lantern, but i would personally sell it and get the book.
Black Ice Sphere - Recovery, Lifesteal, Control
A worse version of the already overrated crown. Sell it.
Rod of Imperial Restraint - Recovery, Lifesteal, Control
See above
Forgehammer of Gond - Power, Deflection, Control resist
If you have this you either sold it for a ton of AD or you are using it for professions, not stats.
Sigils:
These artifacts are gotten by getting a class to icewind dale. While it is a bit of a pain if that is the only reason, i like all the classes. Once you get them, they are an account-wide unlock.
Sigil of the Scourge - Power, Deflection, Stamina
If it was Power, Defense, Stamina it would be good. Deflection makes it meh.
Sigil of the Trickster - Crit, Deflection, Combat Advantage.
Like a lantern but worse. Next.
Hunter - Power, Recovery, Stamina.
Recovery is certainly better than deflection, and i like the stamina gain for sure. This isn’t a bad option, but you probably have better.
Guardian - Defense, Deflection, AOE resist.
Certainly you have better options than this.
Controller - Power, Crit, Control Resist.
The downside is that the control resist isn’t that much, but the upside is you will absolutely get this artifact
Banners:
Banners come through the PvP campaign. I don’t PvP so I don’t have any, but they are certainly popular and useful in combat.
Defenders - Defense, Regen, Incoming healing.
You have many better options.
Tactician - Crit, Movement, AP gain.
If I had a banner, i’d take this. Crit is vital to us, AP gain is vital to us, and honestly i like the movement. The book is probably better (armor pen instead of movement), but this is a very nice option.
Vanguard - HP, Power, Lifesteal
This is like the budget GWF sigil, only we have lifesteal instead of arp. Since you could make up for it by switching your gems, these are very close, so another good option.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
This section is short because in all honesty, there is no best in slot item, rather there is something that gets you whatever you need most to help your character balance your stats.
When you are starting out, you can cheaply pick up the Hrimnir set, which gives you a boost to all your stats. Since you are undergeared, you need help everywhere
Slightly better would be the jewelry from Malabog’s Castle or the Dread Ring campaign, which is +80 to everything except power and HP. Yes, late game, you stack power and HP, but that’s because everything else is at diminishing returns. If you are under diminishing returns, these are some free options to improve your stats.
The ancient rings you will come across farming Castle Never or buy them at the auction house. Only the (massively overrated) control rings are expensive. That’s because if you have decent equipment and artifacts, you will have enough crit and recovery naturally. The other ones are relatively inexpensive and let you boost target stats, which is eventually better than boosting all stats.
There are then some great rings that drop from the Lair of Lostmauth which you can use to min and max your stats. They are slightly more effective and more points than ancient rings, so I am currently using these.
If you have a cat, the belt of Xvim - HP, Power, Defense - is great, as these are the three stats that you probably won’t be hurting on diminishing returns.
Hence, you need to customize these things, and your enchants, to get you whatever statistics you need.
As to what you need, i gave you guidelines in the stats section, but these are just guidelines. You must adjust to what YOU need based upon what you are doing and how you play.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
Soulforged is the obvious choice here, as it lets you come back to life and recover from errors, lag spikes, and phone calls. There is no need to go more than a lesser, making it much more affordable than many other options.
Barkshield is a nice option as well, think of it as a damage sink on top of your HP - somewhat like temporary hit points. It makes it very hard to get one shot. The downside is that the shards are bound and annoying to farm (only the master of the hunt skirmish), making it substantially expensive.
Every other armor enchantment i’ve seen/tried/heard about is more for looking cool than working well. Sure, some tankier classes can make good use of these, but even with a high defense rating, your armor is still cloth.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
Class A:
The two best options here are Terror and Plaguefire. At Perfect Terror/GPF both apply about 4% personal DPS boost and 4% team dps boost (if the DPS is evenly distributed, about 24% of your personal dps). The reason why it is this is great on our CW is that we use as much AOE as possible, blanketing the entire room in the debuff, while other classes either have lower target caps, slower attack rates, smaller AOEs, or most likely, all three.
It is the nature of CW rotations to make CWs the best weapon enchant debuffers in the game. If you care about winning more than paingiver this is certainly the way to go.
Spellstorm Only - Perfect Vorpal. There has been some discussion from some sources that Perfect Vorpal is not WAI with Eye of the storm (a friend of mine will post an ACT parse of this soon). I have no idea if this is still true in mod 5. If Perfect Vorpal is WAI, it’s a Class A enchant for spellstorm, however if it is not it’s a Class B enchant.
Class B:
Master of Flame - Perfect Vorpal - for the sake of this argument, i’m going to assume a good, but not great, crit chance of 35%. We are also going to assume 90% base severity, because we have critical conflagration slotted with 3 points.
This means we hit with 100% damage 65% of the time and 190% damage 35% of the time, for an average of 131.5% damage. With a perfect vorpal we hit 100% damage 65% of the time and 240% damage 35% of the time, or dealing out 149% damage. This is a (149/131.5) an increase of 13.3% DPS. When you add in the fact that assailant can’t crit, the real increase is somewhere on the order of 12% personal DPS. Now remember terror/plaguefire increases personal DPS 8%. So in order to use a vorpal 4% of your DPS must be greater than 4% of everyone else’s DPS put together. Since it is very, very unlikely that we are personally responsible for over 50% damage in the run, a vorpal is nowhere near as good as a terror or a plaguefire (though we will win paingiver).
Perfect Lightning - My friend Carla Valentine developed a special, custom P.Lighting MOF build whereby the enchantment increases her DPS around 19%, making it comperable to a terror or a plaguefire. She is not inclined to share the details of the build with us, but maybe that will change someday.
I personally tested a perfect lightning in Epic SOT, where it accounted for 6% of my DPS. However, ESOT has small mob groups, so i am not getting the full chain effect. If we were in Castle Never or Spellplague, we would expect to see a much larger DPS increase, but if we were single target we would expect to see a smaller DPS increase. That said, vorpal is probably better for less targets and lightning is probably better for more targets, though in most situations terror or plaguefire will be better options.
Class C - because you are so special and different!
These enhancements aren’t as good as the other ones, but might still be useful. They are Feytouched and Bronzewood (please see my enchantment guide for more information). If you are a super girly CW and want a pink orb, try the feytouched, it’s not bad. The bronzewood is also not bad, and i’ve seen it been effective in PvP, but its main advantage is the fact that it is cheap in comparison to other options.
I would be intrigued to see a perfect frost enchant. So if there is a MOF CW with a Perfect Frost, let’s run CN together, ok?
The other options really seem lackluster to the ones listed here, and would be more expensive and less good, so we shouldn’t consider them.
For a more detailed discussion, see here:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?759751-Chem-s-PvE-weapon-enchantment-guide
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
This is a basic description of how to play master of Flame
Ok, so for our basic rotation we are going to run conduit of ice (mastery), shard of the endless avalanche, icy terrain, and steal time. The question people will be wondering at first is, why this bar?
So remember, a very large proportion of our damage is secondary abilities - that is assailant, smolder, rimfire smolder, creeping frost, and warped magic, can account for up to 50% of our damage output. The nice thing about this is that these DoTs can happen even if we are hanging out at the campfire and reading a book. So the way we want to proc as many of these secondary abilities as possible is we want to hit as many mobs as possible, as often as possible.
Secondly we want to add chill to as much as possible as often as possible since chill stacks will refresh our smolder DoT and keep it going longer. This bar allows us to accomplish both goals relatively easily and with all our encounters, leaving us to choose whatever encounter and positioning is best for the given situation.
A third wonderful thing is lifesteal. Most classes get lifesteal in bursts as they swing their encounters and then are lacking during cooldown, however with all these DoTs, a MoF CW has lifesteal that acts like the Jose Canseco of Regen, with enough steroids to go around. As you are dodging, kiting, casting, or reviving your squishy teammates, your life is healing back instantly. The wonderful benefit of this is outside of ESOT and ELOL where the mobs hit like trains, i basically never use potions.
The fourth wonderful thing is this is an amazing control bar. Two freeze spells, a group prone, and a group stun means that unless we pull a huge number of mobs, we can almost keep any monster permanently frozen. They just stand there while our team relentlessly beats them silly.
So let’s review the encounters quickly:
Conduit of ice mastery: Ticks 6 times to one primary target and 6 secondary targets adding chill (refreshing smolder) every tick
Shard: Damages 10 monsters, proning more, builds arcane stacks
Icy Terrain - Ticks many times (forget how much, honestly) for about 10-12 seconds, unlimited target cap
Steal time - ticks 5 times over two seconds against 5 mobs, leaving them stunned.
Hence, say we pull 10 monsters and go through a rotation. That is 42 ticks from conduit, 10 hits from shard, 100 hits from icy terrain, and 25 hits from steal time, meaning we have hit them 177 times ( :O!!! ) in one rotation. Now when you consider that each hit can proc smolder, swath of destruction, our weapon enchantment, the wild hunt rider pet, and in addition can freeze/stun/prone, in the course of one rotation we have controlled and debuffed the entire room. If any survive our team will either beat them senseless or the the DoTs will tick tick tick away and the mobs will die. If they survive to our next rotation, we can just freeze/stun/prone again and they will die eventually anyway. This is why i find it relatively easy to solo epic dungeons on my CW - unless i pull a group way over my target cap i can keep them controlled relatively easily.
Your Features:
This is simple, critical conflagration is essential and quite honestly, a MoF CW is relatively worthless without it.
Secondly, i would slot swath of destruction, as it increases your damage and your teams damage substantially (maybe as much as a GPF enchantment). It is really, really good.
If for some reason you find yourself short on action points, you can slot combustive action - which is an excellent feature - instead of swath. The team DPS will be significantly less, but you will get more dailies. You must consider if the situation mandates this trade.
Your Dailies:
The two dailies are going to be Oppressive Force and Furious Immolation.
If there are less than 8 mobs, Furious Immolation is the key. It gathers all the mobs, does good damage, and adds smolder 100%. The reason why this is so important is that when the mobs are gathered, all your other abilities do more damage. If the 8 mobs are all in one point, and you connect with your rotation, it is likely all but the large elites will be dead.
If there are ever much more enemies, Oppressive force is the way to go. It ticks 5 (or 6) times and has no target limit, adding a substantial stun, and does good damage. If you are like me and prefer to pull door to door, or are short-manning draco, or any other situation when you are swarmed with adds, OF is key. The drawback is it spreads mobs out, making it harder to hit them with your AOEs, but often this can be solved by kiting.
At Will:
Chilling Cloud - if everything else is on cooldown, throw in a full rotation of chilling cloud, add a chill stack, hit 5 mobs, gain the 15% damage from FPT, and go back to your rotation. Because of the FPT (frozen power transfer) feat it’s important to finish the rotation if possible.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
Quantitatively, this can vary largely based upon the instance, the group composition, and other factors. But in general your damage is like this:
25-30% - smolder/rimfire smolder
10-20% - assailant
10% - conduit
10 % - Creeping frost + warped magics
8% - Shard
7% - oppressive force
7% - steal time
6% Icy Terrain
4% - Terror Weapon/Plaguefire Weapon
4% - Furious Immolation.
2-3% - Chilling Cloud.
This is very rough and highly variable, but in general this is where your DPS will come from. Notice that 50% of your damage is indirect, versus almost every other class who deals damage in a direct way.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
The core of the MoF playstyle is DoT and kite - this means that when we engage a group, we are going to target the largest mob first, hopefully hitting him with conduit of ice. We then fight along the side of the group, expending our rotation as we move. How if there is a high priority target that poses a danger to us (archers are the key example), we must hit them with something - normally icy terrain is plenty). So by now, many of the small mobs are dead and only a few are left, so we just keep moving to the next group, and so on. The monsters we leave chasing us will tick away and sometimes die, whereas we expend our rotation on larger groups, making the use of those encounters more efficient. Since we are an AOE class, CW single target DPS is actually quite poor and so we want to fight as many mobs as we possibly can.
Now, if for some reason, you can’t kite to the next group, you want to get the mobs to run at you in a relatively straight line so you can hit all of them. For you math people, this means that if the enemies are in a pseudo elliptical group, the best positioning is at the apex of the major axis on the end where there is most aggro. If there are a large number of them, you can drop oppressive force and they will actually run into it. If there is a smaller amount, you can gather them with furious immolation and then hit them with everything you have.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
I am going to ask a guest writer to give me a setup on this section and will post when it is approved
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
(To be done by a guest)
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
(to be done by a guest).
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
Dragons are special in Neverwinter now, and they have their own abilities. In general, they are more dangerous at the ends than the sides. The most dangerous part of a dragon is the tail, which can quickly swipe you and prone you. It is very difficult to see the animation, if there is even any animation.
The front end of the dragon is dangerous but less so, because you can see the animation of each attack. He can bite, play with you like a cat with his paw, or nose bump (which really hurts). However, this is not as dangerous as the tail, because it can’t prone you. Dragons also have a breath attack, with a many-hit knockback (very dangerous, especially if undergeared), or fireballs, which hurt and can have a prone, a AOE DOT, or both. Luckily these attacks are slow and easy to dodge.
The optimal place to fight is therefore under the wing, and weather at range (like Lostmauth) or close (like the dracolich), the best posistion is by the wing, slightly to the front. The reason why you want to be near the front is in case your teammate grabs aggro and turns him way to fast (a bad habit of TRs and GWFs), which can swing the tail at you quickly, prone you, and leave you vulnerable to many other attacks.
Dragons also have a wing flap, which will be two pumps and a flap, producing an AOE knockback, a second hit of falling damage, and can really mess up your rotation. If the flap is on a 3 count, you can dodge on a 2 count. Since you can dodge, you want to dodge into the dragon and continue your rotation like normal. This means you won’t be in a bad position, you won’t waste time running back to the fight, and you can keep the rhythm of your rotation.
In the dracolich fight, or similar fights where there a lot of adds (far more than 8), you want to fight on top of the boss and drop your oppressive force there. As you move from one side to the other, the trailing adds will move into your AOE control and start taking damage.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
There are things we have to be aware of. In terms of damage, the innocuous archers have the ability to deal out a lot of damage to us because they have a high arp. Too many archers can eat your HP quickly.
A second source of damage is the whight’s lifesuck ability (either in a cone or circle), which ignores armor and ticks multiple times, sometimes even after you dodge. You need to get out ASAP.
Anything that can prone or stun us is especially dangerous. These include fireballs, hulk AOEs, witch’s black balls, dragon stuns, dragon wing flaps, spikes from above, the hellfire magus flame pillars from below, and others. You must always be cognascent of things that can stun you. Just like it is easy for our team to wail on stunned targets, it is also easy for their team to wail on you if you get stunned! If you avoid stuns and there is no lag, you should be able to survive almost anything, but any sort of chain stun will likely kill you.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
Cloak Tower:
The only thing dangerous in here are the eyes of Gurugmesh (I can’t spell it), that have AOE prones. The rest of the mobs are painfully easy.
Cragmire Crypts:
The danger here is Tavern Blackdagger himself. He can teleport and his swings actually hit very hard. In that fight, if you are kiting him around, be sure to hit the archers on your way.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
A relatively easy dungeon, the real danger is Idris’s black stun balls. If you don’t get hit by them, you will be fine. The Direheims can hit pretty hard, but are slow and easy to dodge.
Lair of the Mad Dragon:
The hard part here are the Erinyes. They have an AOE heal, so your team must focus them down and kill them first, or else they will heal all that damage you already did. If you have a low team DPS, be sure to freeze/stun/prone them so they can’t use their heal.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
Some of the monsters in here have AOE charge attacks with a knockback to them. You must avoid those as you make your way through. I found the clear very easy.
This boss is a nightmare for CW. If you watch her closely, the slow attacks she has are easy to dodge, but she has some quick attacks that are difficult. Her charge has a much shorter timing than the charges from the normal monsters elsewhere, so you must dodge immediately. The worse part is she periodically spawns shadow wolves that can one or two shot you - they are very painful.
So you have to get out of there quick and slam icy terrian. If the wolves aggro on you, you might not have casting time for OF or steal time. Personally, this fight i dropped shard for fanning the flame to increase DPS on the boss. Ray of Enfeeblement is also a great option here.
Incredibly difficult to solo, but if you have some space to pew pew you should be able to get some good DPS on her.
The Frozen Heart:
The issue in Frozen Heart are the golems - which you cannot control. They have a smash attack, which causes a brief prone, and an AOE chill attack, which freezes you. The wolves also have a freeze that does tons of damage, and like always, if the archers wail on you you’d be in trouble. I would be sure to dodge the AOEs first, drop IT on the archers second, and launch my rotation as i kite.
The clear wasn't so much hard as it was long, the golems have a lot of HP and you have to fight the first boss 3 times. With a full team, it goes much much faster.
Hrimnir’s attack do tons of damage and can freeze and knock you back, so you must dodge them. Luckily, all his attacks are slow so if you watch your feet you shouldn’t have an issue.
In a full team, if you aren't geared the idea situation is to have someone kite (i've done it on GWF, GF, CW, DC). If the kiter doesn't have the regen/lifesteal/potions/etc to take the arrow shots, you can have someone take out the archers. A HR seems idea here, but a CW can make due to.
The rest of the team can attack the boss. His attacks do hurt but he is painfully slow. The spikes from the ground appear with plenty of time, his axe takes forever, and he throws an iceball with a charge.
Hrimnir has a good amount of life, so keep fighting and he will go down. A great way to burn him is a TR stacking wicked reminder.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
Very much like the wolf den, there are monsters with AOE charge attacks you must dodge, else get knocked back. That’s really the only challenge, as the rest of the encounters are things you have seen before.
The boss acts like a whight with a lifesuck attack, so you must stay out of his AOE.
In all honesty, this dungeon is a faceroll. Cragmire Crypts is harder. My response when i was soloing was "is this even epic"
Note: Blue followed behind me to get chests and enchants. She didn't help me fight along the way.
Spellplague Caverns:
The clear itself isn’t bad, but you have a lot of AOEs to dodge, as most of them come with a stun or a knockback. If you have fleet footwork though, the monsters themselves are slow and predictable. If your team is struggling, slow down.
The amount of stuns in this dungeon is really the problem. If you have issues, just slow down and pull less. If you run out of stamina and you get chain stunned, you're dead.
The last fight really isn’t so bad, but you do have to stay out of their AOEs. You can’t control the adds so they will be clouding up your screen. Personally i tilt my camera way up and watch my feet. Remember that the floor falls as you fight and you will be fine.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
Monsters here hit hard, but luckily there aren’t many prones, stuns or knockbacks, though some webs can root you. I mostly just kite to the dirders and blow everything up on them.
The challenge in this dungeon is the web attack. You won't be able to move or dodge well, leaving you vulnerable to painful things like blademasters and driders, so watch you feet. Also, unlike almost every other control effect soulforge does NOT free you from web, so chain death is a serious risk. If you pull smaller, the clear isn't that bad.
Syndyrth can heal herself, so you can drop your daily when that happens to prevent the heal. If you surround her, she will not port and it will make the fight much easier.
Note: Syndyrth seems impossible for me to solo, as i don't have the single target DPS to out damage her heals. She is actually pretty easy in a group, however. I heard that a Fury SW can solo her with TT - but remember SW have really great single target DPS, and CW DPS is almost all AOE.
Caverns of Karrundax:
This dungeon has been nerfed so much, but in general it just long with a lot of fire attacks. There are (no longer) many prones or knockbacks, but the mobs here can be hard to control and can really hurt you. That said, if you take it one encounter at a time, the clear is easy.
Pyraphenia is actually more difficult than Karrundax. If you get past the first boss, the other two are relatively easy. There is, however, a lot of red on the ground, so it's important to watch you feet.
Now, there are many encounters you can sneak by. I learned the hard way while soloing that THESE ENCOUNTERS ARE MUCH MORE DIFFICULT THAN THE BOSSES. Forgecallers, especially in multiples, are very dangerous and take a long time to kill. There was once I was fighting two forgecallers and then got ambushed by two magma brutes. I died and I don't know where those brutes went. This is why groups sneak around these encounters. (Also might be why cryptic hasn't forced you to kill them).
The dragon is also relatively easy as he is predictable and doesn’t have much HP. The danger is the hurlers (their version of archers), so kite around and catch them if they are giving you an issue. She was actually surprisingly easy. You can kite the adds, catch the kobolds with steal time and icy terrain, the wyrmlings are painfully slow and easy to dodge. The danger is karrundax's fireball, which is indicated by the GIANT RED CIRCLE ON THE GROUND.
Overall, surprisingly easy T2. Not bad at all.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
The clear is very long with lots of stuns from mindflayers and a suck and prone from the thoons. These are very dangerous, so if you have any issues, slow down and pull one by one.
The last boss is a real pain, but in epic you can go to the back corner and take the adds little by little. Once the adds are clear you can hit the boss, but expect a very long fight.
At ⅔ and ⅓ health, he will spawn a boss from another dungeon (not kidding), with all of his adds that can freeze and stun you (also not kidding).
I soloed normal dread vault once and I beat epic dread vault once per class, and that’s it. I really dread this place.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
An ideal dungeon for us, as it is basically a giant AOE fest. In section one, the clear is easy except for the hallway of death (prone to lag spikes) and the spitters just before the spider. The spider himself isn’t difficult.
In section two, we now have some red wizards and archers, which are obnoxious, but if we can hit the archers early, then stay out of the red, we should be fine.
The beholder has some big AOE stuns that are very long. Getting hit can sometimes mean death, but luckily his HP is low and he melts very quickly. The skullcleavers that spawn hit hard, but are easily killed and controlled.
In section 3, the clear to the shadowfell is easy. In the shadowfell, the pulls after the traps must be taken one by one as the monsters can really hurt and the witches can stun you. However, if you don’t overpull, you should be fine.
Xivros is relatively easy, as his attacks are slow and predictable. The issue is the wights and his AOE personal lifesuck, which is extremely painful. If you stay out of that the fight shouldn’t be back.
Section four clear is more of the same - wizards, archers, whights, skeletons, zombies, and one cube. Personally i like to pull everything and blow it up
The dracolich is just a dragon with a ton of adds, and adds you’ve already faced. Follow the dragon strategy above. However, there are hands that erupt from the ground you must dodge. You can also dodge them on a 2 count, so if there is no lag, you can get into a rhythm and timing and it’s easy.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
A long clear with some difficult mobs that really hit hard, it’s more of the same. By the time you get here and you’ve done the other dungeons, it should be nothing to bad for you to handle. If you are a relatively new player, do something else first.
Fulminorax has some dangerous AOEs to dodge, but that's not the real danger. Periodically Valindra will port down and either choke a teammate or summon a portal that produces whights. If she comes down the team must target switch and nuke her before she can accomplish her goal. If you fail, either your teammate will die or you will get a portal which constantly spawns whights, which can eventually overwhelm you.
At ⅓ and ⅔ hp, Fulminorax will fly and spray lightning at you. It really hurts, so walk to a clear area and make sure you don’t get hit.
Valindra’s Tower:
The clear is a very basic, and imo, obnoxious AOE fest.
Valindra herself isn’t very bad, but in phase two she will occasionally grab a teammate with a phantom hand, which you must kill to set them free. If the caskets spawn, each team member has an area to stop them from spawning. If you fail they produce dangerous whights.
At ⅓ and ⅔ health, There will be an intermission with ghosts and lightning. This hurts a TON (one shots most people), and hence you must stay out of it. If the team goes in the same direction, it is pretty easy.
In the last phase she will spawn a ton of caskets. You can either try to close one round and then burn her or just burn her from the beginning. Either way, you must have the DPS to take her out before you are overwhelmed
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
The clear itself is inelegant, but the monsters here can easily one-shot most CWs, so mustn't overpull and be careful.
The boss fight is obnoxious, he has 3 attacks. A fireball (slow and easy to dodge), a firebreath (slow and easy to dodge) and dancing flames (quick and hard to dodge). Hopefully you have a tank drawing his aggro so you don’t have to dodge the dancing flames, but if you don’t you should just study his animation carefully until you get his animation down - but i am warning you, it’s quite difficult.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
The clear is pretty straight forward, but the mobs hit extremely hard and can kill you quickly.
The first boss fight is single (or dual) target, so just stay back and try to do as much DPS as possible.
The second boss fight is two scorpions, which typically one person kites one away while the team kills the other, then wails on the remainder. Their attacks are slow and easy to dodge, but the real threat is fire from the sky, which is easy to miss.
Lostmauth himself is easier than the scorpions, IMO. It is a single target fight, so follow the dragon strategy and stay at distance. Watch your feet for the spikes and the air for the fireballs and his AOE, but you have the space to dodge. At the intermission, take a corner and step into the middle if there is an AOE under you. Finally he will die, which doesn’t take too long, and if you are lucky you will pull a belt.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
As of today, it has not launched, so i have no clue how to do this yet. I will break it down after i have figured it out.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know