The wizard class is waiting

bifflinculte · August 2020

Hello

It's about time to discuss the wizard class.
With launch of mod 16, all classes got a big revamp. Wizard had many imperfections, but at least had excellent dps. Then came the big nerfs, especially for the thaumaturge. Later came a buff, then another nerf, then a new huge bug. This gives a feeling of diy.
The wizard class isn’t satisfying at all, since it clearly lies behind the other damage dealer classes in term of gameplay and dps. It needs more than dps adjustment or sporadic fixes. Almost all classes and paragon got deep overhauls. Wizards are still waiting. At every mod release or big patch, wizard players ask what powers/feats/builds are good, proving this class is still unfinished.
It would be about time to focus on wizards and make a good and consistent class.

Here I’ll enumerate the present issues, and give some ideas how to make a great wizard class. Please feel free to comment, discuss or make proposals.

bifflinculte · August 2020

Wizard, general

Mechanics

Arcane mastery isn’t relevant for the thaumaturge : arcane stacking is difficult, since the reset time of 7 sec is too short and the arcane spell selection reduced. For Arcanist, it’s only good for full arcane build, provided that the “a Step above Mastery” feat is activated.

Spell Mastery’s 10% encounter damage buff is low. If an encounter makes 20% of total dps, the dps gain is only 2%. Moreover, all encounters spells should have an additional effect, as before in mod 16.

Putting Repel and Chill Strike on mastery makes them aoe but shouldn’t reduce their magnitude on the main target. These 2 encounters have the highest dps against single targets, however they can’t be used on mastery…

Class Features

Many class features were very powerful before mod 16, especially the damage buffs. They got heavily nerfed, making them very weak or even useless. On the contrary, some didn’t change and are now too powerful. Class features need consistent rebalancing.

Arcane presence isn’t good for neither arcanist and thaumaturge, but for different reasons. Arcanists are able to enhance their arcane mastery mechanics, but they only have access to a few non-arcane spells. For the thaumaturge it’s the opposite, he has many non-arcane spells in his spell book but its arcane mastery is weak. Anyway, keeping the maximum 5 arcane stacks up is very difficult.

At-will

Wizards have bad at-wills compared to other classes. Bad dps and bad design (Storm Pillar, Scorching Burst). Only Ray of Frost and Chilling Cloud (for pve, thaumaturge only) deserve a slot. Storm Pillar main utility is AP gain.

Magic Missile’s magnitude is too low. All wizards use Ray of frost for single target fights, regardless of the paragon or build. Ray of frost has higher dps and procs additional effect much more often (Storm Spell, Bilethorn damage, Lostmauth’s Revenge…).

Encounters

Wizards are typical spellcasters, but their encounters cooldowns are too long. Before mod 16, these could be heavily shortened by investing in recovery stat, which no longer exists. In TOMM trial, the dps checks phases last less than 30 sec. How can thaumaturges manage to deal high damage with encounters having almost 20 sec cd ?
We need overall encounter cd reduction or efficient cd reduction mechanics (ex : ranger’s trapper build). Relative Haste’s 10% recovery speedup isn’t enough.
Long cooldowns make boring gameplay: cast encounters then wait till they’re up again, cast at-wills (Ray of Frost) meanwhile. None of the present wizard builds needs specific spell rotation.

Pure dps encounter spells should have higher magnitudes than those with extra control or debuff. Unbuffed repel shouldn’t have higher dps than paragon specific single target spells (Disintegration, Chill strike, Icy Rays, Ftf).

Dailies

Wizards have too much controlling aoe daily powers inherited from pre mod 16 control wizard.

Casting Ice knife often doesn't work at the first time and we have to spam the key.

bifflinculte · August 2020

Arcanist

General

The lightning aspect too anecdotic (only 1 encounter) and weak, except for the Storm Spell class feature, which is too powerful compared to all other class features. The Arcanist need a 2nd lightning spell in place of an arcane spell (imprisonment). That would make 2 lightning, 1 cold and 7 arcane encounters. A lightning-based build should be viable, at least for pve.

Feats

Alacrity is weak and useless, especially when casting Arcane Empowerment which already decreases encounters cd.

Assailling force is bugged, it procs less than 10% after an encounter spell.

Snap Freeze is procs everytime a foe gets a chill stacks. So, against cc imune targets it procs only 6 times, until 6 stacks are reached. But if a thaumaturge wizard is in the party, it's bugged and procs all the time.

Chaos magic, Power surge: doubling the at-will damage isn't very useful for wizards, a damage buff for all powers would be much more.

Iced Lightning would be a good feat if more lightning powers were available.

Elemental Reinforcement is an odd feat, it grants 10% damage buff if you don't use 2 powers from same element in a row, else 5% only. The pre mod 16 version granted 5% buff for each element you use (encounters only). This mechanic was much more interesting, since it encouraged players to slot powers from the 3 elements.

A setp above mastery is a good feat, but it shoudn't have been nerfed (1% buff per stack, down from 1.5%, up to 10 stacks). Both of the t5 feats should grant 15% damage buff.

At-will

Arcane bolt is only a weak copy of Magic Missile, which is already weak. Since Arcanists already have access to 3 single target at-wills, an aoe arcane spell instead would be more useful.

Encounters

Lightning bolt has terrible aiming and often misses targets when the caster is moving. It should work like cleric’s Searing Javelin. Magnitude is too weak.

Disintegration is good but as it’s not a control spell, it should have more dps than Repel and Entangling force. In general, full dps spells should always have more dps than those who have buffing or controlling effects.

Shard of the Endless Avalanche is awful to cast and to aim. There should be area aiming and it should trigger when a single foe comes too close (skull trap mechanics). Hence Shard Push should be removed.

Steal Time is one of the rare powers whose cast can be interrupted when hit by foes. When it happens, the cd should only get reset by a fraction of total cd, as before mod 16.

Imprisonment is a useless pre mod 16 remain. Arcanist already has access to many single target control spells. If they want more control, they should go thaumaturge. The arcane damage buff isn’t bad but it doesn’t compensate the absence of damage. Picking Ray of enfeeblement instead will always make a better option for dps. This encounter should be removed and replaced by a lightning-based spell.

Dailies

Maelstrom of Chaos is useless (and has always been), it should be replaced by a true lightning aoe spell (without control) like Chain lightning, Nova…

Arcane Empowerment is the ultimate daily for boss fights. The huge encounter cd reduction isn’t a bad idea, but the execution is chaotic since it forces player to spam the 4 encounters keys. Moreover the cooldowns often jump from 0 to 2 sec. This power should work like Ranger’s Storm's Recovery feat, namely casting an encounter reduces all cooldowns by x sec.
In boss fights, Arcanist’s dps relies too much on Arcane Empowerment. It gives a huge increase of dps for 10 sec, especially if the team coordinates the use of buff artifacts and mounts. There is too much contrast between this uptime and the remaining 50 sec. This makes the use of the envenomed Storyteller journal Artifact almost, since arcanist’s AP gain is a little slow and very random.
A solution would be to keep the cd reduction but to reduce the encounter magnitudes : you cast spells very fast but at cost of efficiency. Moreover, the AP cost should be reduced by half for more flexibilty. Or allow (reduced) AP gain during the uptime.

A last point about Arcane Empowerment : it allows to cast a dot spell (ray of enfeeblement or entangling force) twice within its dot uptime. The second cast will overlap the first, but the ticks won't overlap, the 2nd cast will crushed the remaining ticks.
For ex : with 10 arcane stacks, Entangling ticks 6 times. If you cast it twice in a row when Empowerment is up, it will tick 9 times instead of 12, 3 ticks of the 1st cast will be lost, diminishing the damage by 25%.

Class Features

Storm Spell gets an overhaul every 2 months, without exaggeration. Sometimes it crits, sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes it has icd, sometimes it doesn’t. However, Storm Spell has always been the ultimate class feature and still is, even for full arcane single target build. This class feature needs rebalancing and stability.

Arcane Power Field is bugged, it should grant 20% damage buff (up from 10%) and not 15% when “a Step Above Mastery” feat is on.

bifflinculte · August 2020

Thaumaturge

The thaumaturge paragon had 2 hours of glory. First in mod 16 release, when the Directed Flames feat made smolder proc at every critical hit or chill addition, hence giving to smolder a very high dps. This has been killed by introducing a cd of 12(!) sec.
Then in mod 18, when the Rimefire Weaving feat has been modified and granted party buff. The buff rate going far higher than 10% was obviously a bug. This has been killed by making the buff personal.
Devs pretended these 2 feats didn’t have the intended behavior, although they fitted to the tooltip. On preview server, it took me 5 min to understand how mod 16 Directed Flames then mod 18 Rimefire Weaving worked. Were these feats even tested before their release? This gives a feeling of couldn't-care-less attitude.

General

The cold aspect is very good. The powers, the chill/freeze mechanics and the control are good. Shatter Strike is an awesome feat. Actually, thaumaturges have access to too many cold. Icy rays should be replaced by a fire spell, Ice Storm as well. Nevertheless, even cold-based build is the most effective way for dps, it is still behind the other dps classes, especially in boss fights.

The fire aspect of thaumaturge is underperforming but has great potential. Besides Fireball and Furious Immolation, all fire powers are terrible. The thaumaturge need 1 more fire encounter and higher magnitudes.

Smolder dps is peanuts (~2% of total) and is only useful for personal damage buff, but only if the Rimefire Weaving feat is on. A full smolder focused build isn’t viable at all. The 3 sec dot is too long and the magnitude too low. More feats or class features should focus on buffing smolder dps.
As a thaumaturge's specific mechanic, Smolder should be more powerful than arcanist's Storm Spell class feature.

Rimefire is basically smolder with a blue icon. Refreshing smolder with cold was useful before mod 16 when keeping it up wasn’t easy. Rimefire should be connected to a feat or class feature and have enhanced damage compared to smolder. It should be personal since any wizard including arcanist deals rimefire damage by adding chill on target affected by smolder.
A fire-based build should have more dps than the cold-based, since it grants less control in return.

3 kinds of builds can be imagined for thaumaturge :
• Focus on cold, enhanced cold powers and able to add chill/freeze very fast for good control -> good dps , provides higher survivability in pve. Of course, suitable for boss fights. This is the only build presently.
• Focus on fire, enhanced fire powers and of course smolder -> higher dps but less control.
• Focus on cold/fire synergy, based on element spell rotation, enhanced element spells and rimefire -> higher dps and good control, more difficult to play.

Feats

Relative Haste’s 10% cd reduction isn't effective enough to reduce often very long cooldown. Ranger has much better cd reduction feats based on absolute time reduction after correct encouner rotation.

Smoldering Recovery : AP gain bonus is a good idea but basing it on smolder ticks is bad. It only ticks every 3 sec. Moreover, it makes the AP gain much higher in pve situations than in boss fights.

Glowing flames is good on paper but actually is bad as long as smolder represents 2% of total dps.

Icy Veins is a great feat. It is very useful to add chill very fast, hence granting high control and extra dps in synergy with Shatter Strike when targets are frozen.

Shatter Strike is awesome, it's the capstone of cold based build and should remain.

Chilling advantage is a joke feat. Cold spells add rimefire and no longer add chill. Adding rimefire is useless. No more chill means less dps from chilling presence and loss of aoe control. This feat shouldn’t even deal with cold since Shatter Strike already does. Shatter Strike is a great buff for the cold aspect, this feat should be a great buff for the fire aspect.

Critical Burn isn’t bad but is only worth considering if smolder has decent dps. Frigid Winds instead is an obvious choice, however both options should be viable.

Rimefire Weaving has a cool name, but the effect is disappointing. After 2 major changes, it now automatically grants personal dps buff. This feat should be more tactical and grant buff by alternation between cold and fire encounters (like in mod 16). But this would require to have access to 1 more fire spell and to balanced cold and fire encounters. Yes I’m thinking about Ftf.

Directed flames doesn’t make any sense. Reducing average dps of smolder and setting 12 sec cd instead of 3 sec make, I call this an handicap feat. The “not intended behavior” of mod 16, removing the cd was for sure too powerful, but at least the mechanics was great and could be only adjusted. Alternative behavior of smolder which was no longer dot was definitely a good idea.

At-will

Scorching burst is awful to cast and has a terrible magnitude. Alternatives : Orb of fire, Aganazzar’s Scorcher, fire version of chilling cloud… Its arcanist counterpart, Storm Pillar, is also odd to cast but is at least efficient.

Chilling Cloud is thaumaturge's best aoe at-will, since it's the only usable one we have. Even if only the 3rd hit is aoe... It doesn't proc Bilethorm enchantment consistently.

bifflinculte · August 2020

Encounters

Every thaumaturge specific single target spell should have higher dps than unbuffed Repel.

Chill strike : the aoe version on mastery shouldn’t hit the main target with reduced magnitude (and the 10% buff should also apply).

Icy Rays’ cd is too long. On a single target, it’s exactly the same a Chill strike. This cold power is too much, it should be replaced by a fire spell with the same mechanics but no control, hence making Fire Arrow. So, the thaumaturge would have access to 3 fire and 3 cold encounters. The mechanics are good, you can shoot either on a single target or on 2. The mastery version should add a 3rd projectile.

Conduct of ice is a cold spell, it adds 1 chill stack but isn’t considered as a control spell anymore. Why ? Moreover each tick should add a chill stack. The pre mod 16 version was perfect.

Fanning the flame has good mechanics but all effects have terrible magnitudes, and the cd is awful. Again, pre mod 16 version of that spell was perfect for either aoe and boss fights. Now it's by far wizard’s worst encounter for any situation.

Fireball is good, but its casting time is too long.

Dailies

Furious Immolation has always been bugged since it grants stacking of Smolder and Rimefire.

Ice Storm is useless. A new fire-based single target power would be more useful.

Class Features

Critical conflagration has 2 good effects: adding smolder on every critical hit and granting 10% more crit severity. Every class feature should have only 1 effect. If smolder was powerful, the 1st effect would be sufficient.

Swath of destruction also has 2 effects. Buffing smolder damage is the way to go, but much higher than 5%. The second effect, party buffing by 2%, is quite weak. Swath should only focus on 1 of these 2 effects. The other buff should be in a separate class feature.

Combustive action sometimes instantly grants 20% AP when killing a foe (even tooltip is wrong, even the feature is totally bugged). Thaumaturges generate APs slowly, so this class feature is very good for pve. But useless for boss fights. Maybe it should grant party buff instead (it did before mod 16).

Frost wave is typically a pre mod 16 remainder and no longer makes sense. At the time, it also restored 20% of your APs… It should be replaced by completely new class feature, based on cold or rimefire (3 already focus on fire magic).

bifflinculte · August 2020

Conclusion

Well, this list was pretty long. The wizard class is a big mess and needs more than retouching.

The Arcanist paragon has solid bases since the arcane aspect is good. Powers need rebalancing, and consistancy. The lightning aspect needs improvement and an additional encounter would be welcome.

The Thaumaturge paragon is very unbalanced with an awesome cold aspect on one side, and on the other side a very variable fire aspect from a mod to another. Presently, the only good fire-based feature is the Fireball encounter. The fire aspect needs a deep overhaul : better powers, a 3rd fire encounter (3 cold, 3 fire), efficient Smolder, consistent Rimefire and specific gameplay.

Everytime a new mod is coming, wizards have high hopes but they’re constantly disappointed. Please stop the diy and give us an efficient and fun wizard class.

kir4me8604 · August 2020

All and All. Well said. Wizards are still waiting!!!

nickless3535 · August 2020

A while ago I have commented on wizards of neverinter "I have been playing neverwinter since hr introduced but not played so regularly gave 5-6 month brakes. Back then control was worthy, you can group enemies with arcane singularity and repel them to void. ETOS and Pirate king were farmable. Around some time the best cc is death approach came I think that was start of the decline of the class. Because CW's suppose to be a support class. After some years Renegade mof was a thing. I was hoping for a 4th role as support buff/debuff class thingy with warlocks or with even addition of new bard class. But instead they killed the class we lost one of the best rotations. HR's can use crowd control and they cast skills almost instantly compared to CW. CW's best aoe time steal ability cast time is huge. Cooldowns are increased a lot, CW at-wills are for do something until your dailies ready or for some arcane stacks. I think class was intented to be a AOE CC support, but with eye of the storm and storm spell CW did a lot of damage. (I remember that we had done Dread vault with 5 CW's. When ELOL came they had chosen implement control immune mobs then best cc is death approach came. ) Now we dont have best control rotation for spell storm (conduit in tab, ice terrarin,time steal, shard of the endless avalanche ). 10+ sec cooldowns with cooldown boon %4 cd which is almost useless. New arcane dailiy is just Cw before 80 level. For us to be useful again at least our cast times and cooldowns should be reduced. Spellstorm need aoe arcane atwill like cloud. Even for avernus map farming, HR's can farm mobs easly, GWFs just cleave them as a CW you need to wait for your encounters cooldown before you attack next mob group because our at wills are <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>. Everybody is doing instataneous and smooth damages while we do lagged and discrete damage impulses."

In some topics I can see we agree. But there is an issue that you may have missed. Both Hr's and Tr's have good AOE and they cast them almost instant. You have addressed the issue of casting disadvantages of time steal and shard. Both have too long casting times. I think in general we need to have faster casting times.

This rate cooldown is a huge disadvantage for us. Arcane empowerment is just a sad reminder of how we used to cast spells.

I was really happy with renegade mof, as a support role. But there is no support meta now. Control is only good for single player content, but considering the impracticality of our heavy hitting aoes another class will clear the camp go for another place until we cast our full combo. As I have mentioned before "Everybody is doing instataneous and smooth damages while we do lagged and discrete damage impulses."

c1k4ml3kc3 · August 2020

Since Developers stated that they like where Rogues are in terms of damage, I will go by that.

Rogues currently have amazing DoTs (Bleed & Toxic Blades), stupidly long Smoke Bomb, and encounters like Lashing Blade that have a 50% crit severity.

Bleed is usually top damage on Rogues, dealing a very good portion of damage. Toxic blades' change gave a Feature option for Rogues ever since it started to crit. Hits in ToMM are amazing for both Bleed and Toxic Blades.

Wizards on Arcanist path have 3 DoTs, one of which is bugged (Chill) and underperforms in content unless two wizards are in the party.

By that rationale, and knowing that we won't be getting a big overhaul we desperately want, I will state the following.

General Buffing up Class and everyone is happy:
- Storm Spell should activate 40% of times and its magnitude should be 150.
- Chill should be Fixed so that one Wizard can actually benefit from it.
- Assailing Force should activate 40% of times on Encounters or 10% of times on At-Will.
- Chilling Presence should be giving 15% increased damage instead of 6% at most.
- Ray of Frost should actually tick/proc Vorpal Enchantment.
- AP benefit should be higher for all Encounters since we don't get AP by using our Daily power.
- Ice Knife's Magnitude should be 1700 for starters.
- Run Speed after teleport should be 20% for 2 sec.
- Ray of Enfeeblement should tick 10 times.

Actual class balance & cool stuff
- Storm Spell should activate on each crit and deal 10% weapon damage. 20% with Weapon modification that'd allow it.
- Ray of Frost should proc Vorpal.
- Repel pushes enemies only when slotted on Spell Mastery.
- Conduit of Ice on Arcanist.
- Icy Terrain's magnitude increased to match Smoke Bomb at least.
- Icy Terrain's radius increased to 40 feet rather than 25 feet that is now.
- Icy Terrain becomes a channeling power - 1 Chill stack per 0.5 sec held. Longer you hold before releasing, more chill stacks applied. If full Icy Terrain is applied, enemies become frozen. An indicator for Chills should be also available as well as a cancel option. If Chill & Chilling Presence are used, deal 400 mag damage on Bosses. CD 15 sec.
- Chilling Presence's bonus increased to match Arcane.
- Duration of frozen status increased by at least 200%.
- Sudden Storm should be 700 mag spell.
- Magnitude increased all over the board of Wizard class.

This would bring some variability among choices for the class.

I'll think about other things later...

mickbroster · August 2020

Some sort of response from developers would be a nice start too. I am currently developing my barbarian. Level 80 but far from being maxed out. But already has an at will hitting as hard as my maxed out wizards hardest hitting encounter 😂😂 having a class that is only viable in just two trials is not balanced and even there we can no longer keep up with GWF HR DC. Solo play hitting any mob is a long drawn out affair, hit for a full rotation and everything is still there laughing at us 😂

bifflinculte · August 2020

c1k4ml3kc3 said:
- Ray of Frost should proc Vorpal.

I only agree with this point, with your propositions, a wizard would insta-kill Zariel

Anyway, your opinion is welcome.

modlesie · August 2020

Devs always like to nerf CW, even when he was on his bottom still got nerfed. I am crying when my CW is still casting a skill when cleric already killed all mobs ^.^

PS. Wizard att-wils are just PATHETIC.

Feats have 5/10% chance on proc- really?xD Most of the time they are not even in use

Wizard class need a buff.

c1k4ml3kc3 · August 2020

bifflinculte said:

c1k4ml3kc3 said:
- Ray of Frost should proc Vorpal.
I only agree with this point, with your propositions, a wizard would insta-kill Zariel
Anyway, your opinion is welcome.

"Insta-kill Zariel"
That wouldn't happen.

Considering I was going by Rogue rationale as Devs said they like where Rogue damage is currently at, who already have Dailies that can hit for 1700 magnitude damage and usually are in high 3-6mil buffed, this is only appropriate for a Wizard. I won't even go into Brash Strike on Barbarian.

Let's face it, Icy Terrain and Chilling Presence are underperforming in any content. Icy Terrain needs several seconds for Chills to apply. By allowing Chill Stacks to be applied per 0.5 sec of casting Icy Terrain prior to releasing the power, you'd get fully frozen enemies upon which you can fully utilize next spell that'd deal full potency of Chilling Presence once in 15 seconds.
If you think about it, it's actually a more dynamic way to play Wizard rather than a buff and would return Chilling Presence as an option to use. This wouldn't be OP by any margin, and would differentiate between Wizard that actually use skill from Wizards that just cast for the sake of pretty effects.

Current way to play Wizard relies solely on Ray of Frost (AP gain) and Arcane Empowerment (A barrage of smaller punches). Without either, Wizard would be completely left in mud by any class. Even so, with such Daily and such At-Will, Wizard is currently underperforming in

- DoTs
- Dailies
- Encounters
- Benefits from Features

Even with all my propositions applied, Wizard would still pale in comparison to both Barbarian and Cleric, but would be on-par with Rogues current meta.

The reason to buff Wizards magnitude across the board would be because in 3-4 mods from now, Wizard would be left behind yet again simply because other classes have higher magnitude powers which they can utilize better in Trials.

cornelius · August 2020

Frankly we can only agree with bifflinculte's observation, which depicts the current situation of the wizard. Inconstance, incessant back and forth, obvious lack of seriousness from the devs. The thaum needs rework to give it meaning. The idea of 2 ways one of control and the other of dps is good but the control having disappeared I prefer a role of debuff of damage received and inflicted for cold spells due to even partial immobilization of the target. Snap should be a thaum feat too. Fire spells should indeed generate decent damage allowing the thaum to perform its dps role.
For the arcanist COI is natural as indicated in a previous post. But Arcane Empowerment should have a viable alternative with better performing Ice Knife. also a better combination of cold and electricity spells should allow more damage from electricity spells.

kors · August 2020

Feats

OP: Chaos magic, Power surge: doubling the at-will damage isn't very useful for wizards, a damage buff for all powers would be much more.

Reply: What you suggested it's exactly one of the bug (fixed recently) that made Wizards stronger than other DPS classes. The problem here is that yes, Devs fixed this, but they didn't compensate with a little increase of powers magnitude. And to be honest it's the (easiest and fastest) direction I would go for.

Encounters
General (personal thought): Arcanist Wizard has good ST (Single Target) powers and basically no options for AoE (Area of Effects - mobs fights). In this sense only Icy Terrain and Steal Time are viable options for AoE fights in terms of DPS output. Adding (at least) 1 more option for this kind of fights would be very welcome.

OP: Disintegration is good but as it’s not a control spell, it should have more dps than Repel and Entangling force. In general, full dps spells should always have more dps than those who have buffing or controlling effects.

Reply: You're considering only the magnitude but not the recovery time. It's an encounter with a short cooldown (around 8 seconds) which makes it in line with other dps classes. (Considering the MpS - Magnitude per Second).

OP: Steal Time is one of the rare powers whose cast can be interrupted when hit by foes. When it happens, the cd should only get reset by a fraction of total cd, as before mod 16.

Reply: This is a really annoying encounter and also the only good one (with Icy Terrain) for AoE fights. I would go for a shorter cast time and direct damage not depending on casting charge.

Dailies

OP: Arcane Empowerment is the ultimate daily for boss fights. The huge encounter cd reduction isn’t a bad idea, but the execution is chaotic since it forces player to spam the 4 encounters keys. Moreover the cooldowns often jump from 0 to 2 sec. This power should work like Ranger’s Storm's Recovery feat, namely casting an encounter reduces all cooldowns by x sec.
In boss fights, Arcanist’s dps relies too much on Arcane Empowerment. It gives a huge increase of dps for 10 sec, especially if the team coordinates the use of buff artifacts and mounts. There is too much contrast between this uptime and the remaining 50 sec. This makes the use of the envenomed Storyteller journal Artifact almost, since arcanist’s AP gain is a little slow and very random.
A solution would be to keep the cd reduction but to reduce the encounter magnitudes : you cast spells very fast but at cost of efficiency. Moreover, the AP cost should be reduced by half for more flexibilty. Or allow (reduced) AP gain during the uptime.

Reply: Honestly, I would remove the AP gain block during Arcane Empowerment. And yes, the bug with Encounters cooldown after this daily is annoying and needs to be fixed. In general I like how this daily works, rather I would see added in its description more informations on the effects it grants.

Class Features

OP: Storm Spell gets an overhaul every 2 months, without exaggeration. Sometimes it crits, sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes it has icd, sometimes it doesn’t. However, Storm Spell has always been the ultimate class feature and still is, even for full arcane single target build. This class feature needs rebalancing and stability.

Reply: Since the fix of other bugs it's not a great idea to put a cooldown on this effect. I would like to see it removed, since it has already a chance to proc (20% if I'm not wrong). It's not 100% uptime.

Thank you for taken time in writing these posts.

mehwar · August 2020

being a wizard in this mod is so hard specially if you dont have journals. Cap all offensive stats, all items/comp that need to be leg are leg yet cant deliver good damage cause ur missing 20% dps from those artifacts. Damn i wish we dont rely to that item anymore.

xanderleopard2 · August 2020

also why do dailies have target cap unlike oppressive force? all of them hit like 8 enemies max, only oppressive force hits unlimited targets. YEARS ago this wasnt the case, i have NO idea why they ruined the dailies

bifflinculte · August 2020

Seen in today' patch notes (https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/11477263) :

"Casting an AoE fire spell followed by an AoE ice spell now more consistently applies Rimefire Smolder to all appropriate targets."

It isn't written it will consistently apply rimefire, but more consistently. This is exactly what I was talking about, the smolder/rimefire mechanics is a big mess.

erevel09 · August 2020

"Shard of the Endless Avalanche can no longer generate Action Points outside of combat."

Oh, boy. How could I ever recover from that...

bifflinculte · August 2020

Who is even using Shard of the Endless Avalanche ?

In a dungeon run, the time you cast it and push the shard, your mates are already killing another mobs pack.

But maybe it's a sign that some dev is investigating on wizard powers...

gildriador · August 2020

Shard of Endless Avalanche was good in module 2 and 3

I never used Shard of Endless Avalanche since the biggest nerf of the CW in Neverwinter history.

How much Shard of Endless Avalanche was nerfed in mod 4:

Shard of the Endless Avalanche: This power has had its base impact damage reduced by roughly 33% and its explosion damage reduced by roughly 60%.

I feel nostalgic and I cannot forgot how strong we was nerfed :

https://arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/539540/tyranny-of-dragons-preview-patch-notes-nw-25-20140616d-2/p1

darthpotater · August 2020

Yeah thank you devs I am tired of watching every wizard in the game recharging his Action Points with shard.... Shards everywhere, that anyoning sound... yes thank you.

/sarcasm

gor1llaf1st · August 2020

I get some hard hits sometimes with most of the wizard powers I use, it really feels like the bottom of the damage range needs to be increased to bring up the average to compete with all of the other classes.... and ice knife is just broken, i get like 20k dmg now with that... so great for a daily right? lmao

darthpotater · August 2020

They nerfed the base dmg of all the wizard powers because we could get incredible cooldown reduction with recovery before M16, more than other classes, and wizards have 4 encounter powers instead of 3. So it was an advantage.

Once recovery was removed (M16), they didnt increase the base dmg of all the powers because when the mod was released, wizards were doing massive dmg due to a bug.

They fixed that bug, and wizards started to feel the pain with dmg but it was obscured because wizards were very good in ToMM due to arcanist path. They also nerfed wizards a bit more.

Still, Thaumaturge was somehow viable as debuffer in ToMM (or other bosses) due to another bug, and arcanist was viable in bosses. Then they fixed the thaum bug and now we see the mess the core of the class is.

Now we have a total useless path, and a "playable" path in arcanist but cant compete in any area of the game.

Still there are lots of very good players playing the class knowing how to get the best of it and you wont notice lots of the times in a casual dungeon run, but when you gather in a group good players from all classes you can see the huge difference in power.

onethree13 · August 2020

I have read everything that has been written here and I only hope that the developers will listen to the bifflinculte opinion and other players.
Moreover, I am doubly offended for the Thaumaturge than Arcanist class, because it hurts to watch how other players play with this class and how low they end up with at the end of the dungeon. It can be seen that people give all their best, but there is no result for a banal reason - the balance between classes is very shaky. That is why I switched to the Arcanist class a long time ago, I even liked it, but sometimes I still dream of playing Thaumaturge again.
I'll just write it here that this topic simply didn't disappear from the main forum page.

erevel09 · August 2020

In my opinion, wizards of specific paths should have:

- at least one at-will power with lightning/fire effect (already present, but well... we all know what we have and let's face it, we still only use ray of frost) but with actually useful effect. For AoE and/or Boss fights.
- at least two (maybe even three) encounter powers based on lightning/fire. Arcanists only have lightning bolt which is just bad. Thaumaturgs have Fireball which is nice, but as previously said, has long cooldown. Fanning the Flame... I can't really tell, but it might have some uses if not for the fact that most mobs dies in seconds so it can never reach it's potencial.
- at least one (maybe two) daily powers with lightning/fire effect. No matter the path we use only Icy Knife, Arcane Empowerment, Oppresive Force and Furious Immolation. Only the last one of those is fire based, every other one is either Ice or Arcane based. Not to mention we still have some old, pretty useless dailies that we rarely/never use.

For arcanists:
I would replace shard of the endless avalanche with some lightning based spell, chain lightning perhaps?
I would buff/replace imprisonment. In theory that encounter might have some uses, in practice no one uses it, simply because it lacks damage factor.

For thaumaturgs:
Icy Rays. This should be buffed or replaced with fire based attack, as suggested above.
Fanning the Flame should have reduced cooldown and maybe apply some debuff so that other spells can benefit drom it.
The whole smolder/rimefire mechanic should be changed to be actually viable option to use.

One option for those changes is just looking at Halaster's attacks. He has arcane, ice, fire and lightning based mechanics (not to mention combinations of those), there are many options to choose just from here.
Other option: dragons attacks. Same dragons we can encounter in the Well of Dragons for example:
- ice dragon with instant freezing;
- fire dragon with rain of fire AoE;
- lightning dragon with lightning AoE roar;

Those are only my thoughts, pretty sure most of the things to change were already mentioned before. It just sucks that even though we need to choose one path (arcanist/thaumaturg) we are limited in this paths to arcane - cold based spells as we simply lack lightning/fire ones or those are not really useful (safe for fireball).

kors · August 2020

xanderleopard2#4636 said:
also why do dailies have target cap unlike oppressive force? all of them hit like 8 enemies max, only oppressive force hits unlimited targets. YEARS ago this wasnt the case, i have NO idea why they ruined the dailies

This is actually not true. All AoE powers on all classes have a cap of targets equal to 15 if I'm not remembering wrong. (I'm not absolutely sure about the number, it should be 15).

bifflinculte · August 2020

Other toughts about wizard leveling. At low level they don't have access to aoe encounters and at-wills, except Icy terrain, which has bad dps. However Evocation is the 1st class feature they get.
Maybe Chilling cloud should be the 2nd at-will, and Ray of frost then specific to Thaumaturge.

About Cold magic
-Arcanist: With Snap freeze feat, Ray of Frost and Icy Terrain deal twice more damage as long as targets aren't frozen (more if a thauma is ion party).
-Thaumaturge: Ice magic is improved by Shatter Strike. For pve, it's about same damage than arcanist's Snap Freeze, but delayed. Against cc immune targets, it triggers extra damage from control spells except at-wills. This isn't bad... but Snap freeze is still better (also in boss fights due to previous bug with thauma in party).
Cold magic is presently Thaumaturge's most powerful magic, but it's behind arcanist's Cold magic, which is its 2nd best magic behind arcane...

xanderleopard2 · August 2020

also why do dailies have target cap unlike oppressive force? all of them hit like 8 enemies max, only oppressive force hits unlimited targets. YEARS ago this wasnt the case, i have NO idea why they ruined the dailies

kors#9447 said:

xanderleopard2#4636 said:
also why do dailies have target cap unlike oppressive force? all of them hit like 8 enemies max, only oppressive force hits unlimited targets. YEARS ago this wasnt the case, i have NO idea why they ruined the dailies
This is actually not true. All AoE powers on all classes have a cap of targets equal to 15 if I'm not remembering wrong. (I'm not absolutely sure about the number, it should be 15).

ok oppressive force might have cap but that is not absolutely stupid like other aoe dailies which have 6 or 8 mobs cap. im 100% sure they have this really low cap

co2 · September 2020

kors#9447 said:

xanderleopard2#4636 said:
also why do dailies have target cap unlike oppressive force? all of them hit like 8 enemies max, only oppressive force hits unlimited targets. YEARS ago this wasnt the case, i have NO idea why they ruined the dailies
This is actually not true. All AoE powers on all classes have a cap of targets equal to 15 if I'm not remembering wrong. (I'm not absolutely sure about the number, it should be 15).

That's correct. And in fact in the past Oppressive Force was a kind of 'unlimited'. Later, as part of an homogenization process, they introduced 15 as it seems general internal limit for all classes. One can see this number also often in gear bonuses if mobs are involved.

bifflinculte · September 2020

Anyway, Oppressive Force is the only aoe daily worth using, not because of insane magnitude but because it ticks 5 times and hence procs extra dps (especially Storm Spell).
Only newbies uses Singularity because it's fun to see. Immolation is rarely used by thaumas. Has a wizard ever slotted Maelstrom of Chaos or Ice Storm ?

Wizard should have a benefit from using a daily from a specific type of magic. Except for arcane and only for the arcanist (a Step Above Mastery feat), the wizard class lacks of synergy between spells of a same element.

The wizard class is waiting

Comments