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renegade VS Thaum
dodgo
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 870 Arc User
So Is renegade really that inferior to Thaum?
I looked at the Thaum feats but couldnt see where all theextra DPS is coming from (I assume from cold stacks)
I looked at the Thaum feats but couldnt see where all theextra DPS is coming from (I assume from cold stacks)
Post edited by dodgo on
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If you take TWO of the Rene feats what are you giving up on the Thaum line?
For DPS, what *really* matters is your gear and enchants, provided you choose sensible encounters/at-wills based on your feat choices.
Renegade with good gear will always beat a Thaum with crappy gear.
Take a look at the builds by Stox and Grimah. If you go the grimah route you take critical power and nightmare wizardry from rene and use coi on tab. If you go the stox route you take bitter cold from Oppressor and both of the last two feats before the capstone feat in thaum and use chill strike on tab. Some people do different combinations of both builds.
Renegade has what, 15% more crit severity?
Well, yes. The only real downfall of Thaum is that it relies too much on Shard. Take away Shard and IMO Renegade is the better path, because of the additional crit severity on everything.
Don't worry, when the devs get around to "fixing" Shard, I'm sure they will find a way to nerf it.
15% more crit severity for all of our abilities... this is already better than just more damage on shard. Also renegade can get 15% mitigation or power from chaos magic and the benefit from the 15% mitigation from conduit of ice if a Thaum wizard is in the group. There's also the damage gain to steal time and ray of enfeeblement which are useful.
Preface: both are viable paths.
However, Ray of Enfeeblement is useless for 99% of PvE situations, and while Chaos Magic's mitigation debuff is great, it's by far the best result out of 3 possible results of the % chance proc. One of the reasons I do not invest heavily into the Renegade tree on either of my CWs is that I don't particularly care for Chaos Magic's unpredictability and use Magic Missile more to help keep up Arcane stacks than anything.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
Basically in a good group sw rene that relies on hv thaum for debuff will deal more dmg. But just comparing the two straight up in a vacuum then yeah thaum wins.
Err...yeah...Chaos Magic can apply a 15% damage buff to everyone nearby then a 15% mitigation debuff that applies to every bad guy nearby while giving everyone combat advantage. CoI still has a target cap to apply it's -15%, as near as I can tell Chaos Magic is uncapped. Personally I think a Renegade Master of Flame being able to buff their critical severity to around 173% is pretty darn useful, but that's just me.
Why people think that putting CoI on tab for a -15% mitigation debuff is the bee's knee's and a -15% mitigation debuff from magic missile is useless is beyond me. I find Fanning the Flame takes advantage of nightmare wizardry and all those Chaos Magic buffs/debuff's pretty darn well. It might under perform in personal damage from a thaum...maybe...but it certainly provides just as much if not more team utility.
MoF:
Critical Conflaguration: 15% crit severity
Phantasmal Destruction: 15% crit severity
Shadow Weaver Bonus: 18% crit severity (To entire team)
P.Vorpal: 50% crit severity
Damage Buff/Debuff
Chaos Magic: 15% mitigation debuff/15% damage buff (To nearby team)
Swath of Destruction: 5%(?) mitigation debuff (To entire team)
Nightmare Wizardry: Variable damage buff (To entire team)
So overall you can gain yourself about a 98% increase in your critical severity and at least a 35% damage boost. It's not eye of the storm, but it's pretty neat. My mage gets a 10% damage boost from Combat Advantage as well, so for me personally it equates to about a 45% damage increase that directly feeds into my massive critical severity.
Yes, Renegade isn't as 'consistant' as Thaum but Fury and Nexus proc often enough that I feel it's worthwhile for a MoF.
The god tier cws run thaum mostly in dungeons. For the debuffing I assume, but I believe dmg wise renegade can come close with thaum. The difference is not really worth a heavy debate. I mean Renegade does offer 15% crit severity for combat advantage and a random buff/debuff from MM.
A couple of major reasons for Tab CoI:
1. There's no room for Tab CS if you use both Sudden Storm and CoI (unless you give up either Steal Time or Shard, which is unlikely). Leaves you with SS and CoI as your usual PvE Tab choices.
2. Tab CoI has a noticeably larger AoE and piles up Chill stacks. The AoE on encounter-version CoI is so small that it isn't going to reliably hit 5 targets unless they are in the middle of a Singularity or are otherwise packed like sardines.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
I totally agree. For Thaumaturge you'd always want CoI on tab I'd imagine, if for no other reason than for the increased AoE and added chill stacks. Not that the damage isn't great too. I just don't like being shoehorned into using CoI, which I dislike in general. If the Cap gave bonuses to anything other than CoI I'd switch to Thaum in a heartbeat.
Oh, and CoI is way easier to use and more reliable in it's mitigation debuff. It's the luck of RNG with Chaos Magic. Not sure if the 15% power bonus off Chaotic Fury is better or worse than added mitigation debuff off all Arcane spells...but meh. I know which one is easier to parse.
Swath is 6% dmg buff fyi. also comparing SW vs HV is another thing entirely, but 30% dmg beats 18% crit severity all day. But again, like thaum, you really only need 1 CW to bring it for everyone to benefit.
The trend i see is that renegade is more bursty than thaum, but that could have to do with the psycology of those who play each paragon path.
Spellstorm is absolutely more bursty than MoF - but as pointed out MoF has some really great team benefits that show up if the fight lasts say, longer than ten seconds.
When I look at ACT smolder is 10% of my dps, and since other CWs get credit when they refesh the stacks, 5% of their DPS in a long fight.
Since conduits stack, 3 conduits on draco really helps him melt faster ^^ but Ithink a renegade would burn through the trash a little faster too.
Good points all around.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
At the end of the day both paths are viable so just play which ever one suits your style.
That's because Renegade requires more thought than 'apply CoI to boss, profit'. If I had my choice I'd take both a Renegade and a Thaum. Thaum is great on the clear, and Renegade is awesome in boss fights.
At the end of the day, I simply prefer Renegade for it's versatility. The only thing I'm 'locked' into using all the time is magic missile. My encounters/dailies can get switched out without losing anything from my feats.
The ACT parsing i've done shows the exact opposite trend.
Conduit on draco is way too good to pass up
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
Maybe in that particular fight it does, just because of it's AoE nature and the number of stronger add's. There are plenty of fights where RoE on a boss is a godsend. Karrundax, FH, SP...Idris and GWD as well. RoE will do more damage to the boss directly while adding more debuff. Not saying it's the easy way or anything, just that it's a thing. With just one wizard I obviously wouldn't be trying to single target the dracolich or anything, but a faster boss kill is always a good thing.
Renegade has a very high damage potential and, what is important, it is not locked into some spell choices. E.g. no Thaum can allow himself to use Entangling force on Mastery to group up mobs (and our party loves it). Just as well, I sometimes use Tab SS + RoE, ST, SoEA in dungeons with 1-2 fat mobs + lots of trash encounters. Tab is nearly 25% damage increase for the SS, an already the best spell DPS-wise that has no target limit. MM can roll multiple buffs/debuffs on different targets without target limits too, that is cool (BTW, do same effects stuck?).
All in all, Thaum may give out more constant DPS that even may sometimes be higher, but overall it looses to Rene in terms of versatility and single target damage.
The one that actually makes all around damage shoot through the roof all around is Phantasmal Destruction. You gain a Combat Advantage when you use Steal Time on anything. When you combine with Transcended Master you end up with Eye of the Storm, Nightmare Wizardy and Shards and Sudden Strike doing enormous damage. Now this is actually a combination of both.
COI is great, but with the rate a speed nuker can clear trash mobs, the target you use it on will likely be dead too fast. Making it only useful for larger hard targets that take a while to kill, like Boss Mobs.
Chaos Magic is actually in the same shoes. Because when you're clearing the trash mobs up to the boss, they rarely last long enough and you rarely use MM for it to even come into play, until you get to harder mobs.
So for the actual AoE clearing on adds and trash mobs, neither of the two has any kind of advantage. They come into play on the boss mob, not the adds. The adds and crowd control you can clear faster with a different build that actually does more damage.
MoF is another story entirely.
I generally recommend the "established" builds to a newbie, because when you're doing a hybrid build like that you also have to know what you're doing and what it actually does in order to play it properly,
Actually you can, you just don't get the full measure of it. You can get both though.
Not really, Actually you can do a 3/3 on each. Combined you get an 18% increase.
The opportunity cost though seems awfully high. You'd miss out on Elemental Empowerment, which is pretty nice. Also, no capstone feat in either tree. Would be interesting to check which is actually superior.
Well you have to keep in mind when you're thinking in terms of superior, its a question of superior at what.
There isn't any overall superiority in either Renegade or Thaum. They are right, both Renegade and Thaum are viable. But in order to get anywhere with either them you have to understand their differences.... and what they're good at... vs what they're not so good at. Each one is better at certain parts vs others. I've played both builds. When combining for overall burst damage power, I discovered that little trick in the damage department.
But with all things, there are tradeoffs.
MoF is the same way though this one I haven't played as its a new path. Still DoT casters have generally been very very good against high health, high defense mobs. So when those who play them are showing it, I tend to believe it, as that is its tactical claim to fame in nearly every game.
It was why I addressed my initial post on this matter that way.
I'm rather bored at the moment and may try this for some fun. Could you post your rotation? Are you using steal time on tab for the combat advantage proc? Also have you tried this with Elemental Empowerment in lieu of Transcended?
Well if you'd like I can.
It's a very aggressive build though, and will require you to be up close and personal, on your toes and very active. And the encounter powers can vary depending on what's needed but...
Generally though, its Steal Time, Sudden storm, Shards, and if I'm using Champion armor, another sudden strike at that point as the timer reset on Sudden storm is ready to go again. If with normal HV then just Steal time, Sudden Storm, and Shards. If you don't have time then Shards after Steal.
This type of build and the way its played require you to be able to maneuver you targets into a large group first so you'll basically set them up watch for your opportunity. And you'll be jumping in and right in the thick of combat. Good setup is generally Singularity. When you've got a good 10 or more mobs togather your Sudden Storm will do a good 100k+ total damage on them on a crit. Mine crits normally anywhere from 11k per to 18k per mob. Though with clerics in group I've see it go upwards of 24k per mob not sure what they use. Shards is the finisher after that, unless I'm in Champion gear, then I can launch a second sudden strike into the group.
This is definitely not a newbie build, and requires some skill to pull off.
EDIT: The only path I see on the tree that is not viable is actually the Oppressor path. Not because its not a good strong path on its own right... its because the game around it has been nerfed so thoroughly it negated its usefulness. Imagine if DD spells only worked on like 60% of some mobs in dungeons. Well that's what control spells are like. It's been nerfed so badly in both PvP and PvE that a lot of control powers simply are not able to be used in many circumstances. So what could have been a very viable path, turns non viable in a hurry when the rest of the game won't allow it to be use to its full extent.
With what kind of gear?
Because those numbers are pretty low.