"Only your first post will be counted and if multiple powers are listed, only the first one in the list will be counted. Some posts may end up getting deleted to keep the thread clean and on track."
> @malakut#1916 said: > I agree with most of what you said about RoF except for the proccing weapon enchants quicker. Run ACT, Equip a BT, go compare the proc rates of Magic Missile and RoF over the course of 1 minute. You'll see why I personally choose Magic Missile over RoF in very specific situations. I take a hit to my overall damage but do manage to proc BT more often that way.
As much as I’d love to take your advice and run ACT I can’t. I play on console. Everyone forgets about console players. We can’t run act. We have to base all our information off doing runs with same groups for baselining builds and hitting target dummy looking at numbers and counting in our heads for rate of things happening. If only we had the tools like ACT. With the lack of tool tips in game were left in the dark. Imagine if the game just told us all the info ACT logs provided, a lot of posts here in the forum wouldn’t even exist. OR we just simply have to take the word from PC players that we don’t know and hope they provide good act logs and are 100% honest. There’s so much buried information in this game you would never know without using 3rd party software like ACT logs. Maybe the real issue is there’s massive lack of tool tips in the game which leads us to make assumptions on how things are working vs how they really work. I never knew striking advantage had a cool down until no worries said so a few posts back. Never knew storm spell had a cool down until pc players tested and shared that info with the community. I would never guess magic missile proced bile faster until you just said so cuz testing that on a dummy it sure doesn’t feel that way. So after several years of main classing wizard and here I am today learning new things about my class due to the lack of information provided to us in game. Stop hiding information and make it available to all players on all platforms. You shouldn’t need 3rd party software to find some of these things out.
Do we have any idea of a time line for these improvements? Is it something we can look forward to shortly or is this a long way off ?
A lot of it depends on what changes get made.
To work down from the biggest suggestions:
Rebuild the entire class from the ground up - We wouldn't go this route, but if we did it would be a very long way away.
Change a paragon path into a tank path - Again this wouldn't be seen this year for sure and tough to say when we'd slot in that level of work if we decided to take it on (currently no plans to change a path to tank, but you never know).
Reworking a given mechanic on the class - potentially later this year all depending on the mechanic and the work involved.
Shorten casting time or animation on a power - this ends up taking a bit longer as it now requires a system designer and an animator to do work on the power.
Change a magnitude, cooldown, buff/debuff of a power - that is work that can be done quickly as far as the work itself so that becomes more likely to see in an upcoming patch in the next couple of months (many factors besides this work play into when something would go live, such as when we are making new builds and QA time).
Do we have any idea of a time line for these improvements? Is it something we can look forward to shortly or is this a long way off ?
A lot of it depends on what changes get made.
To work down from the biggest suggestions:
Rebuild the entire class from the ground up - We wouldn't go this route, but if we did it would be a very long way away.
Change a paragon path into a tank path - Again this wouldn't be seen this year for sure and tough to say when we'd slot in that level of work if we decided to take it on (currently no plans to change a path to tank, but you never know).
Reworking a given mechanic on the class - potentially later this year all depending on the mechanic and the work involved.
Shorten casting time or animation on a power - this ends up taking a bit longer as it now requires a system designer and an animator to do work on the power.
Change a magnitude, cooldown, buff/debuff of a power - that is work that can be done quickly as far as the work itself so that becomes more likely to see in an upcoming patch in the next couple of months (many factors besides this work play into when something would go live, such as when we are making new builds and QA time).
I just wanted to say that I appreciate the explanation and potential ETAs on the Wizzy improvement project. Feel free to delete this comment after you have read it since it doesn't meet your standards for this thread according to ph33rm3.
Do we have any idea of a time line for these improvements? Is it something we can look forward to shortly or is this a long way off ?
A lot of it depends on what changes get made.
To work down from the biggest suggestions:
Rebuild the entire class from the ground up - We wouldn't go this route, but if we did it would be a very long way away.
Change a paragon path into a tank path - Again this wouldn't be seen this year for sure and tough to say when we'd slot in that level of work if we decided to take it on (currently no plans to change a path to tank, but you never know).
Reworking a given mechanic on the class - potentially later this year all depending on the mechanic and the work involved.
Shorten casting time or animation on a power - this ends up taking a bit longer as it now requires a system designer and an animator to do work on the power.
Change a magnitude, cooldown, buff/debuff of a power - that is work that can be done quickly as far as the work itself so that becomes more likely to see in an upcoming patch in the next couple of months (many factors besides this work play into when something would go live, such as when we are making new builds and QA time).
I was about to write a post about the problems of some classes, among them mainly the CW and GWF. I would like to start by citing the difference that some classes have in relation to others to activate equipment that require damage in % of the attacker's health and how there are no other viable choices for these classes. An HR can easily activate between 4 and 5 stacks of this type of gear quickly, GWF only 2 and CW only 1/2 in an AOE focused build. Note that this is a considerable gain of % stat which results in more damage if we compare for example an HR with a GWF\CW. I have been looking for alternatives for these items that have stacks so that my AOE build is more effective, but there are only 2 helmets available, the Successor's helmet and the Hat of The Cowardly, for armor this type of equipment "Excutioner's" doesn't exist. There's a ring in VoS, but this one's Forte as a rating, which certainly doesn't make it a viable choice.
Note, Bone Devil Ribcage armor is only activating 1 stack when I use Avalanche of Steel (900 magnitude) in my GWF.
Hint: Make invulnerable to control when CW is using Steel Time.
*Edit:Well, I just managed to read the entire topic now. As I was just passing through to report this issue above, I did it here. If you want, you can delete my post if it's breaking your rules.
Hint 2: Like some posts above, I would also like Lightining Bolt to suffer a magnitude gain (this one capable of activating 1 stack of the above gear, so you can compensate using it) and have a similar design to Ricochet (GF Feat - https: //neverwinter.fandom.com/wiki/Ricochet), so it's not super overwhelming either.
I know this is not about wizard powers, but there is something that has needed attention for quite a while. Wizard main-hand artifact weapon's modification list shows 6 powers - like all other classes. HOWEVER, 5 are at-wills and the 6th reads "Lightning Bolt" which is an encounter. I believe it should be "Storm Pillar" and NOT "Lightning Bolt".
I believe this has been reported as a bug a few times. It's just a display bug and it properly applies the damage increase to Storm Pillar. Also... The wrong Icon is used in the list.
That is what I figured. But hoped it would get fixed.
Do we have any idea of a time line for these improvements? Is it something we can look forward to shortly or is this a long way off ?
A lot of it depends on what changes get made.
To work down from the biggest suggestions:
Rebuild the entire class from the ground up - We wouldn't go this route, but if we did it would be a very long way away.
Change a paragon path into a tank path - Again this wouldn't be seen this year for sure and tough to say when we'd slot in that level of work if we decided to take it on (currently no plans to change a path to tank, but you never know).
Reworking a given mechanic on the class - potentially later this year all depending on the mechanic and the work involved.
Shorten casting time or animation on a power - this ends up taking a bit longer as it now requires a system designer and an animator to do work on the power.
Change a magnitude, cooldown, buff/debuff of a power - that is work that can be done quickly as far as the work itself so that becomes more likely to see in an upcoming patch in the next couple of months (many factors besides this work play into when something would go live, such as when we are making new builds and QA time).
How long would it take to fix the reported bugs? If the mechanics or powers are updated but the bugs are still there, we still have a messed up class.
Personally, I'd like to see the bugs fixed and the cast times reduced to the same level as other classes. As you say, magnitudes & cooldowns are quick changes - so should be left until after the more important work.
Please Do Not Feed The Trolls
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Thank you for the answer @noworries#8859 I’ve made a couple of suggestions so against the rules but in light of this I would like to see the magnitude increase and shorter cool downs. Anything in the short term that will just make us complete a bit better would greatly enhance the enjoyment of running the class. A lot of very good suggestions in here could then be looked at for a long term project
I’m just very inpatient to beat my mate Maui the Hunter and a couple of rogues that just destroy me 🤣🤣
For the comments on ray of frost being the only good at-will
This comment has been approached in different ways but one of the comments didn't match up with what I expect. And that is the comment that it is the only at-will that does decent damage. On a direct damage over time, the at-wills should be similar. I tried a short test of Magic Missile compared to Ray of Frost and the final damage was near exact.
So is the comment more that in conjunction with other powers, ray of frost is more valuable? Is it that for a given paragon path that paragon at-wills aren't considered good and magic missile doesn't match up with what the player is doing for damage increases?
Want to make sure I'm drilling down into the specific concerns/issues.
I use Magic Missile in my ST build and it is somewhat decent, but it doesn't come close to Ray of Frost. There is a big difference if the player is using Vorpal or Bilethorn for example.
With those time frames, in my eyes the "fix" would have the following priorities for: both paragons short term 1 Entangling force: -1s base CD; Steal time -2s CD, Icy terrain -2s CD (1,5 consider pushing Icy terrain to be the 2nd power for levelling purposes) 2 Ray of Enfeeblement - make the debuffs last the 10s as it is stated in the tooltip long term Consider turning away from some self buffs in favour to raw magnitudes, less "randomness"
Arcanist medium 1 Snap Freeze - triggers whenever you try to apply chill to the target (instead of "if you succeed") 2 check the steal time CD counter and animation for non-standard condition entries (bug fix)
Thaumaturge: The main problem is that thauma is being complicated - in sense of what triggers/overwrites what and when. It is a disaster to touch. short term 1 swap normal and mastery effect for Fireball 2 same amount of tics of smoulder, but over 8 secs instead of 12, + double the damage magnitude of smoulder long term 3 reduce the cast time of Fireball to half of what it is
General game mechanics (so probably long term): 1 Consider gaining CA over hard controlled enemies. 2 The bonuses "When you damage or heal the target for more than 10% of your HP" are way too hard to trigger/sustain for some classes and therefore it might be worth to look for an alternative mechanic.
edit: I forgot about AoE at-will, so: long term: a new AoE at-will (with no charge-up requirement), may be a copy-paste of the effect of the lightning enchantment?
What Wizards Need to make the class both useful and addicting to play: - Most important thing in my point of view is the difficulty of a combo and how rewarding it is. The more rewarding a combo is the more appealing the class will be in the long term. For example Rangers. - Animations of the class must change. For example, in-combat walking stance needs to go. It's plain boring and awkward. - Dodge animation is not interesting, it can be something different like for example: Transform into a ball of light that travels faster. - Make Wizards more Wizardry, all-mighty, scary and powerful. Wizards lack a lot of things like damage gap between different classes, they suffer from low magnitude damage, high CD, unrewarding combos. - Wizards are Magic Manipulators, they need to be more "magical" and not throw plain looking fireballs with explosions, that seems like an original idea. - A friend of mine complaint about how he was forced to act as a melee character to output as much dps as he could from his class. But Wizards are supposed to be medium-long range attackers, am I right? - More Passives because "magic". Passives that buff stats and mechanical passives that have certain requirements to get the buff. That will make combos more rewarding and valuable. - All Classes but Control Wizards don't have Encounter CD decrease
Do we have any idea of a time line for these improvements? Is it something we can look forward to shortly or is this a long way off ?
Change a magnitude, cooldown, buff/debuff of a power - that is work that can be done quickly as far as the work itself so that becomes more likely to see in an upcoming patch in the next couple of months (many factors besides this work play into when something would go live, such as when we are making new builds and QA time).
Yes, maybe you should start with simple things because the wizard is really bad right now ...
Thinking back on when the WIZ was overperforming (mod 17-18), and the base reason for this was the use of multiple horns for AP gen, perhaps the easiest and sweeping change might simply be to increase the AP generated by use of the Wizard powers, not to the level of 3 horns but maybe 2 or maybe 1.5 horns. We theoretically know that the AP gen rate from the use of 3 horns allowed the Wizard ( Arcanist ) be top damage in Tomm, it was only when the horns were limited to one that the Wizard fell off, by increasing the AP gen on the Wiz powers it will replace the use of the additional horns and increase burst damage of the Wizard (daily). It is not a long term solution as it does not address the fundamental issues with the different paragons, but it should allow at least the Arcanist in the right hands to be able to top damage charts again.
> @mickbroster#9925 said: > Thank you for the answer @noworries#8859 > I’ve made a couple of suggestions so against the rules but in light of this I would like to see the magnitude increase and shorter cool downs. Anything in the short term that will just make us complete a bit better would greatly enhance the enjoyment of running the class. > A lot of very good suggestions in here could then be looked at for a long term project > > I’m just very inpatient to beat my mate Maui the Hunter and a couple of rogues that just destroy me 🤣🤣
Oh after 3 modules in game, when cw was so behind compare to other classes, suddenly someone reminded himself of this class, well well.
I'm playing wizard almost 3 years and I do every content in this game, so I hope you will consider what I will write...
After combat rework and adding a few new debuff mounts this class needs a lot of changes to compare with others classes on trials and dungeons.
I will describe both paragons and show what is good and what is bad and what should be changes.
ARCANIST
AOE
Wizard is one of the worst class on aoe (maybe cleric is only worse, but healer should be main path this class in my opinion), because he doesn't have any good burst aoe skill to fast clear mobs like rouge or hunter for example.
At-wills
On this path we don't have any good aoe at wills, which will procs bilethorn or lighting enchantment and even bard on dps path got good aoe at will with normal magnitude, what is rly sad...
Cast time is too long and magnitude + radius is a joke, maybe range is fine but ray of frost got the same range and can proc more things.
Encounters
on tab (arcane mastery) this enc shows 385 magnitude; you are thinking "it must be rly good encounter" but in reality it's 38.5 magnitude every 1 second per 10 seconds - less magnitude than at will ray of frost... Solution - increase radius, because area is too small, 1 strong shoot with 250 magnitude and 20 magnitude every 1 second per 10 seconds. (look warlock's "hellfire ring" - base damage and DOT damage). It will make this encounter rly helpful for burst group of mobs/trash. Another one, lets look on other similar encounter, which works like icy terrain, but on rogue radius 30' why not...
Really encounter with good cc, only radius should be higher. That should be the skills on wizard.
this is one big joke, low magnitude, low radius, low range Solution - delete this encounter or rework like "you throw wave of thunders, which stuns all target in front of you for 2 second with 260 magnitude, cast time 0.8 second, range 40' cooldown without changes; conical radius" OR replace with one daily, which I describe below.
Very helpful skill on group mobs with fine radius and stun; magnitude should be a little higher and cast time is seriously too long. Funny thing: in the same time when you cast this encounter, rogue can use 2x "Blade Flurry"(2x 300 magnitude) balance
Daily powers
Seriously is it daily power?! To be honest it's should be encounter and replace lighting bolt. Oh and just look on radius another cw's daily powers.
funny right ?
SINGLE TARGET
Wizard is "good" on trials, but he need time to stacks his every passives and use full rotations encounters on his daily, which doesn't generate action point after use.
Example: Tower of the mad mage- on 1 phase I don't have any problem with use my full rotation, cuz elementals are changes every 4 bars hp of boss, what is enough, but problem is on 3 phase, when boss dissappears every 3 bars, so I'm using my daily and.. I still got 4 encounters to use, but no boss... and all arcane/chill stacks are gone. (only in good team)
This class benefits from longer fights, but actually the longest fight with something/someone is tier 3 hunts avernus.
At wills Ray of frost is fine, but still grouding player in the place, when already cancel use (bug).
Encounters Give this encounter 150/200 magnitude, so players will some often use this.
Another single power encounters (repel, entangling force, disintegrate) need 20-30 magnitude extra
Feats
5% chance is too small, double it and should be fine
I remember this feat got 1% every arcane stack.
feats: "Arcane power field" and "A Step above mastery" don't work together and don't correctly count bonuses.
THAUMATURGE
I don't play this path, because on aoe I got less hard cc (steal time, arcane tempest) fireball got too huge cast time and cancel animation ,when someone kill the target (warlock got similar encounter with kinda less magnitude but cast time is almost 0.5 sec lower) and daily power "Arcane Singularity" got better radius than ,"Furious Immolation", which second daily ignore some mobs.
On single target he got some burst on target with small hp, but on bosses on end game content he got too huge cooldowns on skills and smolder damage is a joke (if fight is longer than 1 minute arcanist eat thaumaturge on dinner like other bis single target classes arcanist ). If you want fix this path, bring back all buffs from module 16, when thaumaturge was party buffer (if you do low damage on your arcanist path you can always be helpful for party with buffs).
So to summarise
-wizard need huge buffs/changes on AOE/clear mobs, cuz control isn't enough with there low magnitude encounters.
-thaumaturge path need to be changed, beacause arcanist path is more useful and do more damage as a dps.
-give us trial, where boss got huge hp bar, so wizard would be stronger (but sadly ranger and cleric too) or undo all nerfs from module 16/17/18 and monitor class.
Increase Radius of normal version would be good. Changing Mastery version to be ranged with larger radius would be great.
Normal version was a great addition to the class. As much as I had fond memories of Shard... its days were long past. However the mastery version isn't really useful We have too many powers that require being surrounded and since the combat changes, CA from mobs is deadly. Making mastery a ranged power with a large radius would be useful.
As an extra, giving a suble indication of the AOE would be useful. Just something like a transparent blue splash or burst effect would help show the limits of the effect.
"We have always been at war with Dread Vault" ~ Little Brother
The amount, People complain about M17 that CWs where kinda good and have litteraly no idea why that where is actualy pathetic. That CW cause of a bug Feat where so good and Ranged at this time where Tomm came out more comofortable where is just not understandable. Since then our Class total Dead Nerfed where is just sad. Horns is not the Proplem and AP gain 100% Aswell not but if you gain 22% Damage from a Brokenfeat that is defnetly a proplem. This post gets deleted anyway but this forum should have been made for ONLY CW players and not salty other class players to Nerf the class even more to there promises or cause they salty that CW could be good in a certain way again.
6
arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
Oh after 3 modules in game, when cw was so behind compare to other classes, suddenly someone reminded himself of this class, well well.
I'm playing wizard almost 3 years and I do every content in this game, so I hope you will consider what I will write...
After combat rework and adding a few new debuff mounts this class needs a lot of changes to compare with others classes on trials and dungeons.
I will describe both paragons and show what is good and what is bad and what should be changes.
ARCANIST
AOE
Wizard is one of the worst class on aoe (maybe cleric is only worse, but healer should be main path this class in my opinion), because he doesn't have any good burst aoe skill to fast clear mobs like rouge or hunter for example.
At-wills
On this path we don't have any good aoe at wills, which will procs bilethorn or lighting enchantment and even bard on dps path got good aoe at will with normal magnitude, what is rly sad...
Cast time is too long and magnitude + radius is a joke, maybe range is fine but ray of frost got the same range and can proc more things.
Encounters
on tab (arcane mastery) this enc shows 385 magnitude; you are thinking "it must be rly good encounter" but in reality it's 38.5 magnitude every 1 second per 10 seconds - less magnitude than at will ray of frost... Solution - increase radius, because area is too small, 1 strong shoot with 250 magnitude and 20 magnitude every 1 second per 10 seconds. (look warlock's "hellfire ring" - base damage and DOT damage). It will make this encounter rly helpful for burst group of mobs/trash. Another one, lets look on other similar encounter, which works like icy terrain, but on rogue radius 30' why not...
Really encounter with good cc, only radius should be higher. That should be the skills on wizard.
this is one big joke, low magnitude, low radius, low range Solution - delete this encounter or rework like "you throw wave of thunders, which stuns all target in front of you for 2 second with 260 magnitude, cast time 0.8 second, range 40' cooldown without changes; conical radius" OR replace with one daily, which I describe below.
Very helpful skill on group mobs with fine radius and stun; magnitude should be a little higher and cast time is seriously too long. Funny thing: in the same time when you cast this encounter, rogue can use 2x "Blade Flurry"(2x 300 magnitude) balance
Daily powers
Seriously is it daily power?! To be honest it's should be encounter and replace lighting bolt. Oh and just look on radius another cw's daily powers.
funny right ?
SINGLE TARGET
Wizard is "good" on trials, but he need time to stacks his every passives and use full rotations encounters on his daily, which doesn't generate action point after use.
Example: Tower of the mad mage- on 1 phase I don't have any problem with use my full rotation, cuz elementals are changes every 4 bars hp of boss, what is enough, but problem is on 3 phase, when boss dissappears every 3 bars, so I'm using my daily and.. I still got 4 encounters to use, but no boss... and all arcane/chill stacks are gone. (only in good team)
This class benefits from longer fights, but actually the longest fight with something/someone is tier 3 hunts avernus.
At wills Ray of frost is fine, but still grouding player in the place, when already cancel use (bug).
Encounters Give this encounter 150/200 magnitude, so players will some often use this.
Another single power encounters (repel, entangling force, disintegrate) need 20-30 magnitude extra
Feats
5% chance is too small, double it and should be fine
I remember this feat got 1% every arcane stack.
feats: "Arcane power field" and "A Step above mastery" don't work together and don't correctly count bonuses.
THAUMATURGE
I don't play this path, because on aoe I got less hard cc (steal time, arcane tempest) fireball got too huge cast time and cancel animation ,when someone kill the target (warlock got similar encounter with kinda less magnitude but cast time is almost 0.5 sec lower) and daily power "Arcane Singularity" got better radius than ,"Furious Immolation", which second daily ignore some mobs.
On single target he got some burst on target with small hp, but on bosses on end game content he got too huge cooldowns on skills and smolder damage is a joke (if fight is longer than 1 minute arcanist eat thaumaturge on dinner like other bis single target classes arcanist ). If you want fix this path, bring back all buffs from module 16, when thaumaturge was party buffer (if you do low damage on your arcanist path you can always be helpful for party with buffs).
So to summarise
-wizard need huge buffs/changes on AOE/clear mobs, cuz control isn't enough with there low magnitude encounters.
-thaumaturge path need to be changed, beacause arcanist path is more useful and do more damage as a dps.
-give us trial, where boss got huge hp bar, so wizard would be stronger (but sadly ranger and cleric too) or undo all nerfs from module 16/17/18 and monitor class.
Sorry for my english and "in game" language.
Whatever happened to just picking one power? All this work for devs to just count this as a +1 Storm pillar...
Do we have any idea of a time line for these improvements? Is it something we can look forward to shortly or is this a long way off ?
A lot of it depends on what changes get made.
To work down from the biggest suggestions:
Rebuild the entire class from the ground up - We wouldn't go this route, but if we did it would be a very long way away.
Change a paragon path into a tank path - Again this wouldn't be seen this year for sure and tough to say when we'd slot in that level of work if we decided to take it on (currently no plans to change a path to tank, but you never know).
Reworking a given mechanic on the class - potentially later this year all depending on the mechanic and the work involved.
Shorten casting time or animation on a power - this ends up taking a bit longer as it now requires a system designer and an animator to do work on the power.
Change a magnitude, cooldown, buff/debuff of a power - that is work that can be done quickly as far as the work itself so that becomes more likely to see in an upcoming patch in the next couple of months (many factors besides this work play into when something would go live, such as when we are making new builds and QA time).
First, thanks for the answer to the time line @noworries#8859 - helps alot.
As an alternative to changing a paragon path to tank, perhaps add a 3rd paragon: Battle Mage perhaps. If this were done, powers from the other two paragons could be re-used as well as new or adjusted powers. And yes, I know that opens a new can of (nuclear) worms because ppl will want a 3rd path for all classes - sorry. However, I do recall when the current loadouts were introduced, someone (cannot remember whom) on the dev team mentioned this was a possibility.
noworries thx for explanation of possible opportunites. Im playing wizard from undermauntine module and can still remember last battle system where was 3 trees of feats and upgrading skills from level ups. I want to ask. Whats the final type roleplay of thaurm and arcane? Yes, Damage dealer. but how? Like, Thaurm. Main damage from at-wills, daily powers, smolder and control - chill. And, Arcane. Main damage from encounter, at-wills, storm and control - stun + chill. Can see only oe difference between this two classes, First one good at aoe damage and the second one on solo targets. Would be there clear boundaries between this two classes? Because they have mixed skills. Arcane - pure arcane and storm but easily can use ice, froze targets and boosts from staking chill. Ray of frost is main at-wills power. Thaum got good solo spells from arcane`s tree. BTW it really looks fun when in arcane build im using daily power arcane empowerment and renew 2 dot skills - Entangling Force and Ray of Enfeeblement, because there is no suitable encounter skills.
It was said earlier that we could suggest one skill. Im suggesting for changing Eye of the Storm (Using an Encounter or Daily power grants you Eye of the Storm for 5 seconds. While active, Eye of the Storm grants you 10% Critical Strike. This effect can only occur once every 20 seconds.) To change it for - While active, Eye of the Storm grants you 10% Critical Strike. without any cooldowns. and make it first in class line of skills.
P.S. Engilsh isn`t my main language and if we got some misunderstanding, sorry ^_^.
Fireball - Reduced cooldown from 18 to 12 seconds. Changed magnitude from 330/750 to 250/550. Currently the cast time is the same but will look into seeing if we can get animation time to bring it down.
Smolder - magnitude has been doubled
Striking Advantage - tooltip has been update to reflect that it only works on At-Will, Encounter and Daily powers and that it has a 1 second cooldown. It has been increased to 25% chance and 100 magnitude.
Imprisonment - is now called Arcane Conduit. The cooldown has been reduced to 12 seconds. It no longer holds the target but instead does 200 magnitude damage. It increases your arcane damage by 15% for 5 seconds. 20% and 225 magnitude when slotted into the special encounter slot.
Magic Missile and Arcane Bolt now give a stack of arcane mastery with each attack instead of only on the final attack of the combo
Chilling Cloud now adds a stack of chill to the target with each attack, final attack still adds chill to main target and nearby targets
Steal Time will need some animation work to change it up so we will see if we can get time for that.
Fireball - Reduced cooldown from 18 to 12 seconds. Changed magnitude from 330/750 to 250/550. Currently the cast time is the same but will look into seeing if we can get animation time to bring it down.
Smolder - magnitude has been doubled
Striking Advantage - tooltip has been update to reflect that it only works on At-Will, Encounter and Daily powers and that it has a 1 second cooldown. It has been increased to 25% chance and 100 magnitude.
Imprisonment - is now called Arcane Conduit. The cooldown has been reduced to 12 seconds. It no longer holds the target but instead does 200 magnitude damage. It increases your arcane damage by 15% for 5 seconds. 20% and 225 magnitude when slotted into the special encounter slot.
Magic Missile and Arcane Bolt now give a stack of arcane mastery with each attack instead of only on the final attack of the combo
Chilling Cloud now adds a stack of chill to the target with each attack, final attack still adds chill to main target and nearby targets
Steal Time will need some animation work to change it up so we will see if we can get time for that.
All of this is cool expect the reduction in magnitude in Fireball. If you are going to do that, how about 300/700 (675 maybe). The rest of the changes will probably increase overall damage, which is what it would seem everyone wants.
Still hoping on changes to Lightning Bolt personally, although I imagine since it will require animation changes, it will take some time for this to occur.
"Fireball - Reduced cooldown from 18 to 12 seconds. Changed magnitude from 330/750 to 250/550." fireball is not a control skill and does not gain additional power from bludgeoning blow and with a magnitude of 550 I think rays of cold are still the best choice for a special slot
"Smolder - magnitude has been doubled" The damage is so small that to be honest, I don't think a 2x increase will change anything
Part of the problem with wizards is the cooldown to mag ratio. Don't decrease the Mag to fireball. Keep the mag strong. Dont take the umph out of what people have enjoyed for years in the tabletop. Its supposed to be strong.
Fireball - Reduced cooldown from 18 to 12 seconds. Changed magnitude from 330/750 to 250/550. Currently the cast time is the same but will look into seeing if we can get animation time to bring it down. .
These are buffs are, mathematically, stronger in magnitude per second. But I think many will see the Fireball change as a slight nerf for AOE situations and a marginally useful buff in single target fights.
Magnitude per second wise, the AoE version is "buffed" in that the cooldown was massively reduced but the base damage only suffered a slight nerf. However, for most AoE fights, you will usually nuke mobs within one set of encounters, making cooldowns irrelevant for most AoE purposes (unless you are undergeared, where you have a different set of issues).
So people will see the lowered base damage, but not so much the impact of the lower cooldown... because the lowered cooldown won't really change much for them.
The single target version is slightly stronger in magnitude per second, but an extra ~4-5 magnitude per second on one encounter isn't going to help Thaumaturge out of its lacking DPS situation.
This change, while mathematically helpful, is not going to help Thaumaturge all that much.
This changes Smolder from a 20 magnitude proc that ticks every 3 seconds ... to a 40 magnitude proc that ticks every 3 seconds, doubles your magnitude per second from 6.67 to 13.67.
For those unaware, the average At-will on most DPS classes has a magnitude per second of ~200 or more MPS (depends on the class).
An extra 7 magnitude per second is a mathematical buff, but won't dig Thaumaturge out of the DPS deficit it is in.
Striking Advantage - tooltip has been update to reflect that it only works on At-Will, Encounter and Daily powers and that it has a 1 second cooldown. It has been increased to 25% chance and 100 magnitude.
The buffs are nice, but I am going to predict that there will be a few people would prefer reducing the internal cooldown on Striking Advantage, if not outright removing the ICD.
Imprisonment - is now called Arcane Conduit. The cooldown has been reduced to 12 seconds. It no longer holds the target but instead does 200 magnitude damage. It increases your arcane damage by 15% for 5 seconds. 20% and 225 magnitude when slotted into the special encounter slot.
This change, mathematically, makes Imprisonment/Arcane Conduit slightly more competitive option relative to Ray of Enfeeblement on Mastery.
However, I can't see many people using Arcane Conduit as is, as RoE on Spell Mastery has superior magnitude per second and has the greater utility in debuffs.
Magic Missile and Arcane Bolt now give a stack of arcane mastery with each attack instead of only on the final attack of the combo
The changes to add Arcane stacks assume that Arcane stack upkeep is a problem... but I have never met any PvE Wizard that feels the compulsive need to hold down Magic Missile for 10 Arcane stacks before they begin attacking.
And that is because Arcane stacks aren't that hard to keep up and don't really do much aside from being a small mathematical buff that runs in the background.
For short fights, enemies die so quick that whether or not you have 0, 4, or 10 Arcane stacks won't really change much about your damage.
For single target burst damage scenarios, you will deploy Arcane Empowerment, which immediately gives you 5 Arcane stacks and spam the rest of your attacks to cover your missing Arcane stacks.
When bosses phase, your Arcane stacks expire and you will lose out on the Arcane stack damage buff. However, I don't see people crying over not having 10 Arcane Stacks for their first set of encounters after the boss comes back.
So, I don't think that being able to generate stacks fast is going to be that big of a buff to Magic Missile and Arcane Bolt, unless Arcane stacks do something besides adding a damage buff that runs in the background.
Chilling Cloud now adds a stack of chill to the target with each attack, final attack still adds chill to main target and nearby targets
These changes help, but I think that Chilling Cloud and Ray of Frost seem a bit too similar in what they do.
With these changes, both Ray of Frost and Chilling Cloud will build up stacks of Chill quickly on the target you aim at.
Their mechanical differences would be: -Ray of Frost can freeze enemies and hits enemies instanteously (Chilling Cloud is slightly delayed by the projectile travel time). -Chilling Cloud can hit multiple enemies on the third hit and has slightly superior magnitude per second relative to Ray of Frost (unless you include Chilling Cloud travel time, which generally makes Chilling Cloud worse in MPS depending on how far you are away from your enemies).
They are "distinctions", but not very strong distinctions, to the point where you might find some people still sticking to Ray of Frost as their go to At-will for valuing the freeze capabilities, rather than sitting through the first two hits of Chilling Cloud to get the AoE chill.
@noworries#8859 the changes seem to go in right direction. Is there any chance to take care of Arcane Power Field class feat to work properly with A Step Above Mastery feat please, please, please. Apf works with 5stacks of arcane mastery and should with 10 right?
Fireball - Reduced cooldown from 18 to 12 seconds. Changed magnitude from 330/750 to 250/550. Currently the cast time is the same but will look into seeing if we can get animation time to bring it down.
Smolder - magnitude has been doubled
Striking Advantage - tooltip has been update to reflect that it only works on At-Will, Encounter and Daily powers and that it has a 1 second cooldown. It has been increased to 25% chance and 100 magnitude.
Imprisonment - is now called Arcane Conduit. The cooldown has been reduced to 12 seconds. It no longer holds the target but instead does 200 magnitude damage. It increases your arcane damage by 15% for 5 seconds. 20% and 225 magnitude when slotted into the special encounter slot.
Magic Missile and Arcane Bolt now give a stack of arcane mastery with each attack instead of only on the final attack of the combo
Chilling Cloud now adds a stack of chill to the target with each attack, final attack still adds chill to main target and nearby targets
Steal Time will need some animation work to change it up so we will see if we can get time for that.
This will not achieve the desired results. refer to rjc9000's above reply for why.
None of this does anything to increase wizards burst DPS. AOE mobs will still be killed by other DPS before we even gain 2 or 3 stacks of arcane mastery or chill. Without stacks we are limp noodles. We need higher magnitudes for sure and for some powers, lower cooldowns as well.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE delete Arcane Empowerment. As long as this daily exists every Arcanist is forced to use it and Thaum will never be competitive.
Fireball - Reduced cooldown from 18 to 12 seconds. Changed magnitude from 330/750 to 250/550. Currently the cast time is the same but will look into seeing if we can get animation time to bring it down.
Smolder - magnitude has been doubled
Striking Advantage - tooltip has been update to reflect that it only works on At-Will, Encounter and Daily powers and that it has a 1 second cooldown. It has been increased to 25% chance and 100 magnitude.
Imprisonment - is now called Arcane Conduit. The cooldown has been reduced to 12 seconds. It no longer holds the target but instead does 200 magnitude damage. It increases your arcane damage by 15% for 5 seconds. 20% and 225 magnitude when slotted into the special encounter slot.
Magic Missile and Arcane Bolt now give a stack of arcane mastery with each attack instead of only on the final attack of the combo
Chilling Cloud now adds a stack of chill to the target with each attack, final attack still adds chill to main target and nearby targets
Steal Time will need some animation work to change it up so we will see if we can get time for that.
The whole fire aspect of thaumaturge needs an overhaul, at least a serious boost. Fire aspect should deal more dps than cold aspect, since fire spells don't set cc (except furious immolation).
And what about fanning the flame? magnitude is very low for both st and aoe aspects
Chilling advantage and Directed Flames feats are useless and actually grant a malus. If both are taken at the same time, they even break smolder, which no longer deals damage or generates AP (smoldering recovery feat).
Finally, smolder ticks every 3sec, which is far too much.
Comments
@noworries the DEV said ..
+1 to this
"Only your first post will be counted and if multiple powers are listed, only the first one in the list will be counted. Some posts may end up getting deleted to keep the thread clean and on track."
Fireball
Clearly this is the only spell wizards should be using. The fact that we're not using it all the time means it's under-powered.
This is Dungeons and Dragons and it's a combat-oriented game. -> Fireball
It is the solution to all problems, especially since we're not a support class ... and 'Control' is no longer in our name.
> I agree with most of what you said about RoF except for the proccing weapon enchants quicker. Run ACT, Equip a BT, go compare the proc rates of Magic Missile and RoF over the course of 1 minute. You'll see why I personally choose Magic Missile over RoF in very specific situations. I take a hit to my overall damage but do manage to proc BT more often that way.
As much as I’d love to take your advice and run ACT I can’t. I play on console. Everyone forgets about console players. We can’t run act. We have to base all our information off doing runs with same groups for baselining builds and hitting target dummy looking at numbers and counting in our heads for rate of things happening. If only we had the tools like ACT. With the lack of tool tips in game were left in the dark. Imagine if the game just told us all the info ACT logs provided, a lot of posts here in the forum wouldn’t even exist. OR we just simply have to take the word from PC players that we don’t know and hope they provide good act logs and are 100% honest. There’s so much buried information in this game you would never know without using 3rd party software like ACT logs. Maybe the real issue is there’s massive lack of tool tips in the game which leads us to make assumptions on how things are working vs how they really work. I never knew striking advantage had a cool down until no worries said so a few posts back. Never knew storm spell had a cool down until pc players tested and shared that info with the community. I would never guess magic missile proced bile faster until you just said so cuz testing that on a dummy it sure doesn’t feel that way. So after several years of main classing wizard and here I am today learning new things about my class due to the lack of information provided to us in game. Stop hiding information and make it available to all players on all platforms. You shouldn’t need 3rd party software to find some of these things out.
To work down from the biggest suggestions:
Rebuild the entire class from the ground up - We wouldn't go this route, but if we did it would be a very long way away.
Change a paragon path into a tank path - Again this wouldn't be seen this year for sure and tough to say when we'd slot in that level of work if we decided to take it on (currently no plans to change a path to tank, but you never know).
Reworking a given mechanic on the class - potentially later this year all depending on the mechanic and the work involved.
Shorten casting time or animation on a power - this ends up taking a bit longer as it now requires a system designer and an animator to do work on the power.
Change a magnitude, cooldown, buff/debuff of a power - that is work that can be done quickly as far as the work itself so that becomes more likely to see in an upcoming patch in the next couple of months (many factors besides this work play into when something would go live, such as when we are making new builds and QA time).
Note, Bone Devil Ribcage armor is only activating 1 stack when I use Avalanche of Steel (900 magnitude) in my GWF.
Hint: Make invulnerable to control when CW is using Steel Time.
*Edit:Well, I just managed to read the entire topic now. As I was just passing through to report this issue above, I did it here. If you want, you can delete my post if it's breaking your rules.
Hint 2: Like some posts above, I would also like Lightining Bolt to suffer a magnitude gain (this one capable of activating 1 stack of the above gear, so you can compensate using it) and have a similar design to Ricochet (GF Feat - https: //neverwinter.fandom.com/wiki/Ricochet), so it's not super overwhelming either.
Personally, I'd like to see the bugs fixed and the cast times reduced to the same level as other classes. As you say, magnitudes & cooldowns are quick changes - so should be left until after the more important work.
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
I’ve made a couple of suggestions so against the rules but in light of this I would like to see the magnitude increase and shorter cool downs. Anything in the short term that will just make us complete a bit better would greatly enhance the enjoyment of running the class.
A lot of very good suggestions in here could then be looked at for a long term project
I’m just very inpatient to beat my mate Maui the Hunter and a couple of rogues that just destroy me 🤣🤣
both paragons
short term
1 Entangling force: -1s base CD; Steal time -2s CD, Icy terrain -2s CD
(1,5 consider pushing Icy terrain to be the 2nd power for levelling purposes)
2 Ray of Enfeeblement - make the debuffs last the 10s as it is stated in the tooltip
long term
Consider turning away from some self buffs in favour to raw magnitudes, less "randomness"
Arcanist
medium
1 Snap Freeze - triggers whenever you try to apply chill to the target (instead of "if you succeed")
2 check the steal time CD counter and animation for non-standard condition entries (bug fix)
Thaumaturge:
The main problem is that thauma is being complicated - in sense of what triggers/overwrites what and when. It is a disaster to touch.
short term
1 swap normal and mastery effect for Fireball
2 same amount of tics of smoulder, but over 8 secs instead of 12, + double the damage magnitude of smoulder
long term
3 reduce the cast time of Fireball to half of what it is
General game mechanics (so probably long term):
1 Consider gaining CA over hard controlled enemies.
2 The bonuses "When you damage or heal the target for more than 10% of your HP" are way too hard to trigger/sustain for some classes and therefore it might be worth to look for an alternative mechanic.
edit: I forgot about AoE at-will, so:
long term: a new AoE at-will (with no charge-up requirement), may be a copy-paste of the effect of the lightning enchantment?
- Most important thing in my point of view is the difficulty of a combo and how rewarding it is. The more rewarding a combo is the more appealing the class will be in the long term. For example Rangers.
- Animations of the class must change. For example, in-combat walking stance needs to go. It's plain boring and awkward.
- Dodge animation is not interesting, it can be something different like for example: Transform into a ball of light that travels faster.
- Make Wizards more Wizardry, all-mighty, scary and powerful. Wizards lack a lot of things like damage gap between different classes, they suffer from low magnitude damage, high CD, unrewarding combos.
- Wizards are Magic Manipulators, they need to be more "magical" and not throw plain looking fireballs with explosions, that seems like an original idea.
- A friend of mine complaint about how he was forced to act as a melee character to output as much dps as he could from his class. But Wizards are supposed to be medium-long range attackers, am I right?
- More Passives because "magic". Passives that buff stats and mechanical passives that have certain requirements to get the buff. That will make combos more rewarding and valuable.
- All Classes but Control Wizards don't have Encounter CD decrease
> Thank you for the answer @noworries#8859
> I’ve made a couple of suggestions so against the rules but in light of this I would like to see the magnitude increase and shorter cool downs. Anything in the short term that will just make us complete a bit better would greatly enhance the enjoyment of running the class.
> A lot of very good suggestions in here could then be looked at for a long term project
>
> I’m just very inpatient to beat my mate Maui the Hunter and a couple of rogues that just destroy me 🤣🤣
+1
I'm playing wizard almost 3 years and I do every content in this game, so I hope you will consider what I will write...
After combat rework and adding a few new debuff mounts this class needs a lot of changes to compare with others classes on trials and dungeons.
I will describe both paragons and show what is good and what is bad and what should be changes.
ARCANIST
AOEWizard is one of the worst class on aoe (maybe cleric is only worse, but healer should be main path this class in my opinion), because he doesn't have any good burst aoe skill to fast clear mobs like rouge or hunter for example.
At-wills
On this path we don't have any good aoe at wills, which will procs bilethorn or lighting enchantment and even bard on dps path got good aoe at will with normal magnitude, what is rly sad...
Cast time is too long and magnitude + radius is a joke, maybe range is fine but ray of frost got the same range and can proc more things.
Encounters
on tab (arcane mastery) this enc shows 385 magnitude; you are thinking "it must be rly good encounter" but in reality it's 38.5 magnitude every 1 second per 10 seconds - less magnitude than at will ray of frost...
Solution - increase radius, because area is too small, 1 strong shoot with 250 magnitude and 20 magnitude every 1 second per 10 seconds. (look warlock's "hellfire ring" - base damage and DOT damage). It will make this encounter rly helpful for burst group of mobs/trash.
Another one, lets look on other similar encounter, which works like icy terrain, but on rogue
radius 30' why not...
Really encounter with good cc, only radius should be higher. That should be the skills on wizard.
this is one big joke, low magnitude, low radius, low range
Solution - delete this encounter or rework like "you throw wave of thunders, which stuns all target in front of you for 2 second with 260 magnitude, cast time 0.8 second, range 40' cooldown without changes; conical radius" OR replace with one daily, which I describe below.
Very helpful skill on group mobs with fine radius and stun; magnitude should be a little higher and cast time is seriously too long.
Funny thing: in the same time when you cast this encounter, rogue can use 2x "Blade Flurry"(2x 300 magnitude) balance
Daily powers
Seriously is it daily power?! To be honest it's should be encounter and replace lighting bolt. Oh and just look on radius another cw's daily powers.
funny right ?
SINGLE TARGET
Wizard is "good" on trials, but he need time to stacks his every passives and use full rotations encounters on his daily, which doesn't generate action point after use.
Example:
Tower of the mad mage- on 1 phase I don't have any problem with use my full rotation, cuz elementals are changes every 4 bars hp of boss, what is enough, but problem is on 3 phase, when boss dissappears every 3 bars, so I'm using my daily and.. I still got 4 encounters to use, but no boss... and all arcane/chill stacks are gone. (only in good team)
This class benefits from longer fights, but actually the longest fight with something/someone is tier 3 hunts avernus.
At wills
Ray of frost is fine, but still grouding player in the place, when already cancel use (bug).
Encounters
Give this encounter 150/200 magnitude, so players will some often use this.
Another single power encounters (repel, entangling force, disintegrate) need 20-30 magnitude extra
Feats
5% chance is too small, double it and should be fine
I remember this feat got 1% every arcane stack.
feats: "Arcane power field" and "A Step above mastery" don't work together and don't correctly count bonuses.
THAUMATURGE
I don't play this path, because on aoe I got less hard cc (steal time, arcane tempest) fireball got too huge cast time and cancel animation ,when someone kill the target (warlock got similar encounter with kinda less magnitude but cast time is almost 0.5 sec lower) and daily power "Arcane Singularity" got better radius than ,"Furious Immolation", which second daily ignore some mobs.
On single target he got some burst on target with small hp, but on bosses on end game content he got too huge cooldowns on skills and smolder damage is a joke (if fight is longer than 1 minute arcanist eat thaumaturge on dinner like other bis single target classes arcanist
If you want fix this path, bring back all buffs from module 16, when thaumaturge was party buffer (if you do low damage on your arcanist path you can always be helpful for party with buffs).
So to summarise
-wizard need huge buffs/changes on AOE/clear mobs, cuz control isn't enough with there low magnitude encounters.
-thaumaturge path need to be changed, beacause arcanist path is more useful and do more damage as a dps.
-give us trial, where boss got huge hp bar, so wizard would be stronger (but sadly ranger and cleric too) or undo all nerfs from module 16/17/18 and monitor class.
Sorry for my english and "in game" language.
Increase Radius of normal version would be good. Changing Mastery version to be ranged with larger radius would be great.
Normal version was a great addition to the class. As much as I had fond memories of Shard... its days were long past. However the mastery version isn't really useful We have too many powers that require being surrounded and since the combat changes, CA from mobs is deadly. Making mastery a ranged power with a large radius would be useful.
As an extra, giving a suble indication of the AOE would be useful. Just something like a transparent blue splash or burst effect would help show the limits of the effect.
Horns is not the Proplem and AP gain 100% Aswell not but if you gain 22% Damage from a Brokenfeat that is defnetly a proplem.
This post gets deleted anyway but this forum should have been made for ONLY CW players and not salty other class players to Nerf the class even more to there promises or cause they salty that CW could be good in a certain way again.
As an alternative to changing a paragon path to tank, perhaps add a 3rd paragon: Battle Mage perhaps. If this were done, powers from the other two paragons could be re-used as well as new or adjusted powers. And yes, I know that opens a new can of (nuclear) worms because ppl will want a 3rd path for all classes - sorry.
Thanks!
Im playing wizard from undermauntine module and can still remember last battle system where was 3 trees of feats and upgrading skills from level ups.
I want to ask. Whats the final type roleplay of thaurm and arcane? Yes, Damage dealer. but how?
Like, Thaurm. Main damage from at-wills, daily powers, smolder and control - chill. And, Arcane. Main damage from encounter, at-wills, storm and control - stun + chill. Can see only oe difference between this two classes, First one good at aoe damage and the second one on solo targets.
Would be there clear boundaries between this two classes? Because they have mixed skills. Arcane - pure arcane and storm but easily can use ice, froze targets and boosts from staking chill. Ray of frost is main at-wills power. Thaum got good solo spells from arcane`s tree. BTW it really looks fun when in arcane build im using daily power arcane empowerment and renew 2 dot skills - Entangling Force and Ray of Enfeeblement, because there is no suitable encounter skills.
It was said earlier that we could suggest one skill. Im suggesting for changing Eye of the Storm (Using an Encounter or Daily power grants you Eye of the Storm for 5 seconds. While active, Eye of the Storm grants you 10% Critical Strike. This effect can only occur once every 20 seconds.)
To change it for - While active, Eye of the Storm grants you 10% Critical Strike. without any cooldowns. and make it first in class line of skills.
P.S. Engilsh isn`t my main language and if we got some misunderstanding, sorry ^_^.
Fireball - Reduced cooldown from 18 to 12 seconds. Changed magnitude from 330/750 to 250/550. Currently the cast time is the same but will look into seeing if we can get animation time to bring it down.
Smolder - magnitude has been doubled
Striking Advantage - tooltip has been update to reflect that it only works on At-Will, Encounter and Daily powers and that it has a 1 second cooldown. It has been increased to 25% chance and 100 magnitude.
Imprisonment - is now called Arcane Conduit. The cooldown has been reduced to 12 seconds. It no longer holds the target but instead does 200 magnitude damage. It increases your arcane damage by 15% for 5 seconds. 20% and 225 magnitude when slotted into the special encounter slot.
Magic Missile and Arcane Bolt now give a stack of arcane mastery with each attack instead of only on the final attack of the combo
Chilling Cloud now adds a stack of chill to the target with each attack, final attack still adds chill to main target and nearby targets
Steal Time will need some animation work to change it up so we will see if we can get time for that.
Still hoping on changes to Lightning Bolt personally, although I imagine since it will require animation changes, it will take some time for this to occur.
fireball is not a control skill and does not gain additional power from bludgeoning blow and with a magnitude of 550 I think rays of cold are still the best choice for a special slot
"Smolder - magnitude has been doubled"
The damage is so small that to be honest, I don't think a 2x increase will change anything
Magnitude per second wise, the AoE version is "buffed" in that the cooldown was massively reduced but the base damage only suffered a slight nerf.
However, for most AoE fights, you will usually nuke mobs within one set of encounters, making cooldowns irrelevant for most AoE purposes (unless you are undergeared, where you have a different set of issues).
So people will see the lowered base damage, but not so much the impact of the lower cooldown... because the lowered cooldown won't really change much for them.
The single target version is slightly stronger in magnitude per second, but an extra ~4-5 magnitude per second on one encounter isn't going to help Thaumaturge out of its lacking DPS situation. This change, while mathematically helpful, is not going to help Thaumaturge all that much.
This changes Smolder from a 20 magnitude proc that ticks every 3 seconds ... to a 40 magnitude proc that ticks every 3 seconds, doubles your magnitude per second from 6.67 to 13.67.
For those unaware, the average At-will on most DPS classes has a magnitude per second of ~200 or more MPS (depends on the class).
An extra 7 magnitude per second is a mathematical buff, but won't dig Thaumaturge out of the DPS deficit it is in. The buffs are nice, but I am going to predict that there will be a few people would prefer reducing the internal cooldown on Striking Advantage, if not outright removing the ICD. This change, mathematically, makes Imprisonment/Arcane Conduit slightly more competitive option relative to Ray of Enfeeblement on Mastery.
However, I can't see many people using Arcane Conduit as is, as RoE on Spell Mastery has superior magnitude per second and has the greater utility in debuffs. The changes to add Arcane stacks assume that Arcane stack upkeep is a problem... but I have never met any PvE Wizard that feels the compulsive need to hold down Magic Missile for 10 Arcane stacks before they begin attacking.
And that is because Arcane stacks aren't that hard to keep up and don't really do much aside from being a small mathematical buff that runs in the background.
For short fights, enemies die so quick that whether or not you have 0, 4, or 10 Arcane stacks won't really change much about your damage.
For single target burst damage scenarios, you will deploy Arcane Empowerment, which immediately gives you 5 Arcane stacks and spam the rest of your attacks to cover your missing Arcane stacks.
When bosses phase, your Arcane stacks expire and you will lose out on the Arcane stack damage buff. However, I don't see people crying over not having 10 Arcane Stacks for their first set of encounters after the boss comes back.
So, I don't think that being able to generate stacks fast is going to be that big of a buff to Magic Missile and Arcane Bolt, unless Arcane stacks do something besides adding a damage buff that runs in the background. These changes help, but I think that Chilling Cloud and Ray of Frost seem a bit too similar in what they do.
With these changes, both Ray of Frost and Chilling Cloud will build up stacks of Chill quickly on the target you aim at.
Their mechanical differences would be:
-Ray of Frost can freeze enemies and hits enemies instanteously (Chilling Cloud is slightly delayed by the projectile travel time).
-Chilling Cloud can hit multiple enemies on the third hit and has slightly superior magnitude per second relative to Ray of Frost (unless you include Chilling Cloud travel time, which generally makes Chilling Cloud worse in MPS depending on how far you are away from your enemies).
They are "distinctions", but not very strong distinctions, to the point where you might find some people still sticking to Ray of Frost as their go to At-will for valuing the freeze capabilities, rather than sitting through the first two hits of Chilling Cloud to get the AoE chill.
Apf works with 5stacks of arcane mastery and should with 10 right?
This will not achieve the desired results. refer to rjc9000's above reply for why.
None of this does anything to increase wizards burst DPS. AOE mobs will still be killed by other DPS before we even gain 2 or 3 stacks of arcane mastery or chill. Without stacks we are limp noodles. We need higher magnitudes for sure and for some powers, lower cooldowns as well.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE delete Arcane Empowerment. As long as this daily exists every Arcanist is forced to use it and Thaum will never be competitive.
And what about fanning the flame? magnitude is very low for both st and aoe aspects
Chilling advantage and Directed Flames feats are useless and actually grant a malus. If both are taken at the same time, they even break smolder, which no longer deals damage or generates AP (smoldering recovery feat).
Finally, smolder ticks every 3sec, which is far too much.
My Wizard Guide:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JezPmehRjvkrHQKwEJ9tGGesDuekj2mcfKiWxlx56ns/edit?usp=sharing
My Arbiter Cleric guide:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UZGOcQIMLCh5I4lrH63REK5YVsa3Kpk1hOyfic21z8k/edit?usp=sharing