Any ETA on the changes hitting preview? I'd like to test them out. My concern, as expressed previously, it that the main single target dps of the wizard, which is Arcanist using AE daily, is going to result in a lower dps output for the wizard. I understand many players are more focused on the other changes, which are a boost to the wizard AoE powers, but for those of us that do trials and end game dungeons, the majority of dps comes from this brief time with artifacts and that daily. Even at 10-15% boost in the dps of the single target powers using during this time will not make up for the lost dps from the reduced number of encounters and side processes during the casing of arcane empowerment. It's a matter of pure math. My biggest fear is that these changes, while nice for thaum, and for AoE, will have the net effect of nerfing an end game wizards dps, not boosting it. I do not believe that this is the intention. I really would like to be able to run some testing far in advance of this being pushed to live, as in the past, the trend has been for changes to hit preview, then pretty much go to live with little opportunity for input.
As it stands now on preview, the changes are 100% a nerf to end game wizard dps. We need to make sure this is not the case when these changes go live.
Chilling Advantage Now directly applies Rimefire Smolder in addition to Chill. This is a nice change, though it seems like Rimefire Smolder only applies once at at activation. Ray of Frost did a rimefire every 4.6s, Chilling Cloud did one every 1.8s. That happens to be their full animation cycle time.
Directed Flames So lots of weird behavior. Smolder appears to be able to trigger every second. If you spam Scorching Burst you get roughly 1 smolder per second. Cool.
If you use Critical Conflagation, and crit Icy Terrain, you get 1 smolder and 8 rimefires. Appears to be working.
Unless you use Arcane Presence, Chilling Presence, Evocation, Orb of Imposition, or Frost Wave. Then you'll get 1 smolder and 3 rimefires. You have to use Swath or Combustive as your second feature or Critical Conflag doesn't trigger every time.
If you try to use Chilling Advantage without Crit Conflag, you'll get 2 rimefire with Icy Terrain. If you add in Critical Conflagration (w/ Swath or Combustive) you'll get 1 smolder & 8 rimefire on a crit, or just 2 rimefires on a non-crit. If you use one of the other features you'll get 1 smolder and 2 rimefire.
My speculation is that Chilling Advantage only applies Rimefire Smolder on activation--not every time chill is applied. Because there's no Rimefire debuff chill can't "refresh" it? I don't know why Icy Terrain gets 2 rimefire hits instead of just 1 though, never figured that out.
Finally, Directed Flames changes the damage type of Rimefire Smolder to "fire" instead of "cold".
Everyone please do give me feedback on this version of the power. I am absolutely willing to revert back to the pure cooldown reduction version.
So I think from a dps standpoint, Arcane Empowerment is in a good place. Allowing AP gain makes it the choice for the "Action Point gain maxi", without it being massively overpowered compared to everything else.
The updated cooldown method is quite jarring in the UI though, as you noted. I think it's also causing a bug where artifacts and toolbelt items used when AE is active are being given a big cooldown boost. So I'd definitely be in favour of reverting back to the recharge speed cooldown method.
My only remaining piece of feedback on that daily remains the same - I think it would work better, from a playstyle perspective, to have a shorter empowered period with lower cooldown times:
- Activate daily - Enables temporary 20% damage buff, with AP gain allowed - Shortened/sped-up animation to "empower" - First round of encounters available as soon as the animation is complete - Flat 3s cooldown for all slotted encounters - Second round of encounters available to use - Encounters go back to regular cooldown time
I believe this would be equivalent to how it currently works (you basically get 2 rounds of encounters whilst empowered), but gives a distinct feeling between being empowered and not empowered.
Smolder and rimefire smolder are still bugged on preview when Directed Flames is on. Fire spells trigger smolder every second as intended, but critical conflagration often doesn't.
Same issue with rimefire smolder, which isn't trigger as it should with or without critical conflagration.
Also with Directed Flames on, the Chilling Advantage feat is bugged. When casting cold spell, Rimefire Smolder is added, but only once every 2 sec (chilling cloud) or even 4 sec (ray of frost).
Here another example of Directed Flames behavour with Icy terrain used afer a cast of scorching burst (1 target, critical conflagration off, chilling advantage off). Rimefire Smolder should tick every second (as terrain does) but does only once.
mamalion1234Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,415Arc User
edited October 2022
when i use combustive action or swath of destruction with critical conflagration + directed flames feat each critical attack of conflagration trigger the directed flames.
if i use any other feat like chilling presence with critical conflagration it just procs once the direct flames on the encounter cast ( instead of each critical hit because of the critical conflagration)
Also the chilling advantage paragon feat trigger once the rimefire smolder-directed flames synergy on encounter cast or daily cast or att will cast ( i think that is work as intended?)
Also with Directed Flames on, the Chilling Advantage feat is broken. When casting cold spell, chill stacks are added (they shouldn't) and Rimefire Smolder is added, but only once every 2 sec (chilling cloud) or even 4 sec (ray of frost).
the new chilling advantage says that you can apply and chills and rimefire smolder
Besides being bugged (see 2 posts before), Chilling Advantage as a feat doesn't make sense since adding rimefire smolder on foes is already automatic by adding smolder before or using critical conflagration. So it's very weak compared to its alternative, Shatter Strike which is a solid source of dps based on cc and chill mechanics, especially against cc immune targets.
It would make more sense to have a feat related to fire or non cc spells instead.
In general, cc powers should always have lower magnitudes than regular damaging spells.
I think the Arcanist single target is now in a a good place. Not exploiting the bugged Artifact cooldowns with AE I am getting roughly 425k damage per / sec on the dummy in Chult which is very close to the 500k / sec you'd like to see. My build isn't optimized so I'm sure others will be able to hit that threshold.
Not sure about the Thaumaturge. Aragorn apparently hit 500k / sec on a training room dummy, but it was a very specific test of single target burst damage between two arti calls so the actual damage should be lower. Still can't test Directed Flames properly. Maybe there are builds that are less bugged than others, but I'm not sure you can slot the feat and expect a decent and / or consistend output thanks to the bugs described above.
For AoE Thauma is really relevant though because imho it now procs Ribcage et al a little more reliably than Arcanist simply because the damage of Smolder is big enough to trigger these powers. Imho the AoE damage also went up a bit, but I don't really have good data from live to compare it because AoE is whatever in this game anyway.
2
mamalion1234Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,415Arc User
I think the Arcanist single target is now in a a good place. Not exploiting the bugged Artifact cooldowns with AE I am getting roughly 425k damage per / sec on the dummy in Chult which is very close to the 500k / sec you'd like to see. My build isn't optimized so I'm sure others will be able to hit that threshold.
Not sure about the Thaumaturge. Aragorn apparently hit 500k / sec on a training room dummy, but it was a very specific test of single target burst damage between two arti calls so the actual damage should be lower. Still can't test Directed Flames properly. Maybe there are builds that are less bugged than others, but I'm not sure you can slot the feat and expect a decent and / or consistend output thanks to the bugs described above.
For AoE Thauma is really relevant though because imho it now procs Ribcage et al a little more reliably than Arcanist simply because the damage of Smolder is big enough to trigger these powers. Imho the AoE damage also went up a bit, but I don't really have good data from live to compare it because AoE is whatever in this game anyway.
Since there have been some discussions about the pros and cons to the changes for Arcane Empowerment, I wanted to delve into options for it in more detail. Created a separate discussion, to not de-rail this main thread too much.
If anyone is interested in contributing ideas, take a look:
I just wanted to let people know that the time for Wizard changes is now largely over.
I know there's lots of stuff people still wanted to see, and I'm sorry we didn't get to everything. Hopefully the Wizard is nevertheless in a better place now than it was before.
I know there's been some feeling that maybe the Wizard has been overbuffed, and is now doing too much dps. That's certainly possible -- in any complex game, tuning isn't an exact science -- but it's something we'll keep an eye on. I don't want to pull back any of the changes just yet, but we'll monitor the dps data on our end once these changes have had a chance to soak for a while on Live. Our goal is to have Wizard be (roughly) equal to other strong dps classes (like Rogue), but not to obsolete those other dps classes.
I did revert the "experimental" version of Arcane Empowerment (where it showed high cooldown numbers but then subtracted very quickly), since the consensus overall seemed to be against it. Note the earlier reduction of AE from x5 cooldown speed to x3 cooldown speed is still there, though (see above for discussion and some of the reasoning).
Thanks again to everyone who contributed to the discussion!
4
mamalion1234Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,415Arc User
I just wanted to let people know that the time for Wizard changes is now largely over.
I know there's lots of stuff people still wanted to see, and I'm sorry we didn't get to everything. Hopefully the Wizard is nevertheless in a better place now than it was before.
I know there's been some feeling that maybe the Wizard has been overbuffed, and is now doing too much dps. That's certainly possible -- in any complex game, tuning isn't an exact science -- but it's something we'll keep an eye on. I don't want to pull back any of the changes just yet, but we'll monitor the dps data on our end once these changes have had a chance to soak for a while on Live. Our goal is to have Wizard be (roughly) equal to other strong dps classes (like Rogue), but not to obsolete those other dps classes.
I did revert the "experimental" version of Arcane Empowerment (where it showed high cooldown numbers but then subtracted very quickly), since the consensus overall seemed to be against it. Note the earlier reduction of AE from x5 cooldown speed to x3 cooldown speed is still there, though (see above for discussion and some of the reasoning).
Thanks again to everyone who contributed to the discussion!
I just wanted to let people know that the time for Wizard changes is now largely over.
I know there's lots of stuff people still wanted to see, and I'm sorry we didn't get to everything. Hopefully the Wizard is nevertheless in a better place now than it was before.
I know there's been some feeling that maybe the Wizard has been overbuffed, and is now doing too much dps. That's certainly possible -- in any complex game, tuning isn't an exact science -- but it's something we'll keep an eye on. I don't want to pull back any of the changes just yet, but we'll monitor the dps data on our end once these changes have had a chance to soak for a while on Live. Our goal is to have Wizard be (roughly) equal to other strong dps classes (like Rogue), but not to obsolete those other dps classes.
I did revert the "experimental" version of Arcane Empowerment (where it showed high cooldown numbers but then subtracted very quickly), since the consensus overall seemed to be against it. Note the earlier reduction of AE from x5 cooldown speed to x3 cooldown speed is still there, though (see above for discussion and some of the reasoning).
Thanks again to everyone who contributed to the discussion!
Thanks!
What is the likelihood of seeing a Directed Flame fix in the near future? It's a capstone feat of Thauma and currently largely not usable. Thauma will have viable builds for AoE and ST it seems, but having the 5th feat bugged obviously isn't ideal.
Thank you for helping us with our wizards. Are you able to provide an eta for when the changes will move from preview to the live server or will it hit with the release of mod24?
There's something annoying with thauamturge's directed flames build in 1v1. The only way to add smolder almost every second is Critical Conflagration. Chilling advantage, Icy Veins fail to trigger rimefire smolder reliably. But using Critical Conflagration has an annoying drawback: for any reason, it reduces the crit rate of smolder by roughly 30% (when crit is capped at 90%).
Dummy-tests, which represent a happy path where everything goes according to plan, the player doesn't need to worry about getting out of danger zones, being controlled, etc.
Tests while running actual content, the problem with those is that there's too many variables, party compositions change, teammates don't perform exactly the same every run, etc.
With that in mind I decided to test these recent changes in a real environment while trying to reduce variables as much as possible, and so I thought soloing a dungeon would be a good idea to compare performances between servers, and randomly selected Temple of the Spider(ToS) for this task. I can now confirm these changes are in fact a nerf, since on live I had no issue soloing ToS while on preview I couldn't even make it past the first boss! This is really alarming and should sufice to show the class needs more buffs.
No issue soloing ToS on live server
After the big nerfs
0
arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
Dummy-tests, which represent a happy path where everything goes according to plan, the player doesn't need to worry about getting out of danger zones, being controlled, etc.
Tests while running actual content, the problem with those is that there's too many variables, party compositions change, teammates don't perform exactly the same every run, etc.
With that in mind I decided to test these recent changes in a real environment while trying to reduce variables as much as possible, and so I thought soloing a dungeon would be a good idea to compare performances between servers, and randomly selected Temple of the Spider(ToS) for this task. I can now confirm these changes are in fact a nerf, since on live I had no issue soloing ToS while on preview I couldn't even make it past the first boss! This is really alarming and should sufice to show the class needs more buffs.
No issue soloing ToS on live server
After the big nerfs
I would use a dungeon that hasn't changed between live and preview. ToS on live is a lot easier than standard ToS on preview.
I would use a dungeon that hasn't changed between live and preview. ToS on live is a lot easier than standard ToS on preview.
I know that, which is why I ran it master.
Why are you using two different pieces of content to test then? Shouldn't you be running the same content? OFC you're not going to get past the first boss on master!
Why are you using two different pieces of content to test then? Shouldn't you be running the same content? OFC you're not going to get past the first boss on master!
It's the same dungeon but on preview it's unscaled and I was a solid 10k iL above requirements! It goes to show just how big these nerfs are
0
mamalion1234Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,415Arc User
Why are you using two different pieces of content to test then? Shouldn't you be running the same content? OFC you're not going to get past the first boss on master!
It's the same dungeon but on preview it's unscaled and I was a solid 10k iL above requirements! It goes to show just how big these nerfs are
Comments
As it stands now on preview, the changes are 100% a nerf to end game wizard dps. We need to make sure this is not the case when these changes go live.
Thank you,
Talia (@krevg)
Arcane empowerement reduce the cooldowns of artifacts and belt items like forger's box
Now directly applies Rimefire Smolder in addition to Chill. This is a nice change, though it seems like Rimefire Smolder only applies once at at activation. Ray of Frost did a rimefire every 4.6s, Chilling Cloud did one every 1.8s. That happens to be their full animation cycle time.
Directed Flames
So lots of weird behavior. Smolder appears to be able to trigger every second. If you spam Scorching Burst you get roughly 1 smolder per second. Cool.
If you use Critical Conflagation, and crit Icy Terrain, you get 1 smolder and 8 rimefires. Appears to be working.
Unless you use Arcane Presence, Chilling Presence, Evocation, Orb of Imposition, or Frost Wave. Then you'll get 1 smolder and 3 rimefires. You have to use Swath or Combustive as your second feature or Critical Conflag doesn't trigger every time.
If you try to use Chilling Advantage without Crit Conflag, you'll get 2 rimefire with Icy Terrain. If you add in Critical Conflagration (w/ Swath or Combustive) you'll get 1 smolder & 8 rimefire on a crit, or just 2 rimefires on a non-crit. If you use one of the other features you'll get 1 smolder and 2 rimefire.
My speculation is that Chilling Advantage only applies Rimefire Smolder on activation--not every time chill is applied. Because there's no Rimefire debuff chill can't "refresh" it? I don't know why Icy Terrain gets 2 rimefire hits instead of just 1 though, never figured that out.
Finally, Directed Flames changes the damage type of Rimefire Smolder to "fire" instead of "cold".
The updated cooldown method is quite jarring in the UI though, as you noted. I think it's also causing a bug where artifacts and toolbelt items used when AE is active are being given a big cooldown boost. So I'd definitely be in favour of reverting back to the recharge speed cooldown method.
My only remaining piece of feedback on that daily remains the same - I think it would work better, from a playstyle perspective, to have a shorter empowered period with lower cooldown times: I believe this would be equivalent to how it currently works (you basically get 2 rounds of encounters whilst empowered), but gives a distinct feeling between being empowered and not empowered.
Same issue with rimefire smolder, which isn't trigger as it should with or without critical conflagration.
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
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
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
when i use combustive action or swath of destruction with critical conflagration + directed flames feat each critical attack of conflagration trigger the directed flames.
if i use any other feat like chilling presence with critical conflagration it just procs once the direct flames on the encounter cast ( instead of each critical hit because of the critical conflagration)
Also the chilling advantage paragon feat trigger once the rimefire smolder-directed flames synergy on encounter cast or daily cast or att will cast ( i think that is work as intended?)
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
the new chilling advantage says that you can apply and chills and rimefire smolder
Arcane spells add rimefire smolder instead of normal smolder with same feats/features.
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
It would make more sense to have a feat related to fire or non cc spells instead.
In general, cc powers should always have lower magnitudes than regular damaging spells.
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
Not sure about the Thaumaturge. Aragorn apparently hit 500k / sec on a training room dummy, but it was a very specific test of single target burst damage between two arti calls so the actual damage should be lower. Still can't test Directed Flames properly. Maybe there are builds that are less bugged than others, but I'm not sure you can slot the feat and expect a decent and / or consistend output thanks to the bugs described above.
For AoE Thauma is really relevant though because imho it now procs Ribcage et al a little more reliably than Arcanist simply because the damage of Smolder is big enough to trigger these powers. Imho the AoE damage also went up a bit, but I don't really have good data from live to compare it because AoE is whatever in this game anyway.
509k on arcanist
If anyone is interested in contributing ideas, take a look:
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1266159/wizard-options-for-arcane-empowerment/p1
I just wanted to let people know that the time for Wizard changes is now largely over.
I know there's lots of stuff people still wanted to see, and I'm sorry we didn't get to everything. Hopefully the Wizard is nevertheless in a better place now than it was before.
I know there's been some feeling that maybe the Wizard has been overbuffed, and is now doing too much dps. That's certainly possible -- in any complex game, tuning isn't an exact science -- but it's something we'll keep an eye on. I don't want to pull back any of the changes just yet, but we'll monitor the dps data on our end once these changes have had a chance to soak for a while on Live. Our goal is to have Wizard be (roughly) equal to other strong dps classes (like Rogue), but not to obsolete those other dps classes.
I did revert the "experimental" version of Arcane Empowerment (where it showed high cooldown numbers but then subtracted very quickly), since the consensus overall seemed to be against it. Note the earlier reduction of AE from x5 cooldown speed to x3 cooldown speed is still there, though (see above for discussion and some of the reasoning).
Thanks again to everyone who contributed to the discussion!
What is the likelihood of seeing a Directed Flame fix in the near future? It's a capstone feat of Thauma and currently largely not usable. Thauma will have viable builds for AoE and ST it seems, but having the 5th feat bugged obviously isn't ideal.
Thank you for helping us with our wizards. Are you able to provide an eta for when the changes will move from preview to the live server or will it hit with the release of mod24?
1. Bring back the Entangling Force AoE in Spell Mastery
2. Make Arcane Bolt at least like the Rogue's Shuriken Toss if only by lowering the magnitude a bit from 120 to 80 or 70
But in the end I guess I will have to continue depending on powerful partners in AoE.
Sorry if there is something you don't understand I use a translator
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
- Dummy-tests, which represent a happy path where everything goes according to plan, the player doesn't need to worry about getting out of danger zones, being controlled, etc.
- Tests while running actual content, the problem with those is that there's too many variables, party compositions change, teammates don't perform exactly the same every run, etc.
With that in mind I decided to test these recent changes in a real environment while trying to reduce variables as much as possible, and so I thought soloing a dungeon would be a good idea to compare performances between servers, and randomly selected Temple of the Spider(ToS) for this task. I can now confirm these changes are in fact a nerf, since on live I had no issue soloing ToS while on preview I couldn't even make it past the first boss! This is really alarming and should sufice to show the class needs more buffs.No issue soloing ToS on live server
After the big nerfs