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Good build for Control Wizard?
qwal1
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users Posts: 12 Arc User
Hello everyone, since you start with the first 5 skillpoints already put those will stay.
What is good skills?
am thinking singularity freezing storm magic missile control 3 on all
WHat else is good and usefull?
and what feats are good and what to skip that are bad.
What is good skills?
am thinking singularity freezing storm magic missile control 3 on all
WHat else is good and usefull?
and what feats are good and what to skip that are bad.
Post edited by qwal1 on
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Aggro 4-5 groups of enemies, activate singularity and place conduit on a tanky mob wait for them to collapse then hit tab and finally pop your shied.
working very well at lvl 30
I will leave it to you to tinker around with this set up but pretty much you will be insta freezing full groups. and chain controlling elites still.
PVPer rocking it Solo queue style since the dawn of Neverwinter
I cannot state that I have used any uber math-skills, nor any deductive reasoning. I simply go with what works towards my version of playing. So far, I out-dmg rogues when hitting groups of enemies, and stay alive long after 60% of the team has died on a boss. There are tweeks needed, but it is a working philosophy.
So, my at-will of choice is arcane missle. I dont even use my other at will, and have simply removed it as a pressable button all-together. The reason for this is simple, it does dmg, and it has great range, and at lvl 50 it suddenly explodes in usefullness. But perhaps most of all, it builds arcane-stacks, and keeps those stacks alive.
As my tab-skill, I use chill-strike. It does have a slight rooting problem, so you need to pay attention to the entire combat in a boss-fight. If you don't, those splats might appear, and go off before you can get away, especially if you have used your teleport too freely.
encounters that I currently use is: Sudden storm, Shield, and steal time.
Sudden storm, might be a bit hard to use effectivley. But coupled with steal time and other controlling effects (a cleric friend, or the singularity daily) it becomes easier. It requires you to be fairly near your target (about 20 feat, but I suck at estimating stuff like that, partly because I come from the modern world, where we use SI units
Steal time. Aoe stun. That says it all. The build-up is harsh, and the stun is short. But it is long enough for you to use some of your abilities effectivley, and it relies on your timing more than anything if you use it correctly. I love it, so it stays on my hotbar.
Shield. To shield or not to shield. I guess it comes down to two things. Your gear, and your ability to avoide dmg. The gear can at later levels somewhat make up for the dmg you recieve, and potions are your best friend no matter what. The push-effect is rarley used effectivley, atleast by me. However, now that I am getting close to using shard of endless avalance, I might just give this skill the boot.
Dailies. Arcane singularity and ice knife.
Arcane singularity meshes so nicely with my other powers, that even though it is hard to get the action-points, it is permanently on my hotbar. Pulling all targets from a nice big area into a singluar point is just perfect for a ice strike follow-up. Dmg is low, but of negatable importance. I play alot with a cleric guildie, and we benefit both from this spell. His searing chains (I think it is called) adds insult to injury
Ice-knife. Many times (up to lvl 50) many mobs are die quickly, and you feel like concentrating all dmg on one foe. Ice-knife does just that. And it even "controls" a few bosses that are otherwise immune to your CC.
In addition, maelstrom of chaos is too unwieldy to use in a fight, matters little, and effects too few to take my position for aoe daily. It is a nice idea, and would have been fun to play with. But it simply cannot beat the CC that Asingualrity gives. And Opposing force just takes to long to have an impact on the mobs, and the stun is shorter than the steal time encounter. Thus, I cannot replace these two dailies even if I wanted.
Ice storm daily. Every once in a while you want to push everything away. But that is the key-word here. Every once in a while. The usefullness of this skill becomes less than 1%. If it could be slotted in a third daily slot, then perhaps. But as the system is set up now, you will more often than not add chaos in a fight and gain nothing that the other dailys don't already do better.
I will make a video talking a bit more in depth this weekend. But untill then, make sure you try out all spells, and then fully respec when you have found what type of playstyle suits your abilities best. There is alot of room for different approaches here, but they might not be obvious. It is hard to do trial and error, since muppets and morons begged cryptic for "more control over my skills". Alas, that is the way of things.
Have fun, and I hope to see you in game.
Oh, and I hope you realize that control is a secondary ability. Dmg is your first. Stack that power and crit on items.
My two quick cents.
But yea I would agree that everyone should try out all the different spells and spell set ups and different spell masterys to find what works with how you are playing.
Right now I am geared for Crit and then w/e else the gear has on it. I would like to mess around with a power/recovery build but I am sure it would fall short since it seems you need 1000 recovery for a 1 second difference in recast timers.
PVPer rocking it Solo queue style since the dawn of Neverwinter
need to try out that spellwarden, seems thought out and prolly works well with my playstyle. Not that big a fan of cold based stuff.
At 52, for solo questing I use MM/RoF for At-Wills, my encounter spells are Shield (I use this offensively and defensively), Conduit of Ice, Steal Time, Entangling Force, passives are Storm Spell and Eye of the Storm, and my dailies are Singularity and Ice Storm. I don't currently use it, but I need to mention that Enfeebling Ray is an excellent ability and I should use it, but I'm doing well at the moment and this setup is a hell of a lot of fun to play (for me).
In dungeons, I swap in Chill Strike for Shield and Evocation for Storm Spell, and I will pretty much never use Ice Storm here because it is annoying for other players and hurts your own dps as well.
For PvP, I swap in Repel for Steal Time (currently, still pondering this) and Orb of Imposition for Evocation. (I need to do/see math on this since the 15% longer CCs may be irrelevant due to the low CC duration in PvP.)
My paragon feats are in Renegade, and the points for 50-60 go into Thaumaturge. My whole build is crit-foused, and so primary stats are power and critical rating. I went with 20 INT (18+2) and level up attributes go into CHA and INT. Going with 16 INT/CHA instead of 18/3 would have been slightly more optimal for a Renegade build, but I wanted to keep my options open. I tried some focus on defense and life steal, but neither was efficient and the best defense really is offense (and cc, cc, cc, and blink like crazy).
I went through numerous different spell setups and the above works best for me currently. But do experiment and find out what you enjoy the most.
If you beat rogues in dungeons, or are no more than 10% behind them, you are doing well. No one else should come close to your damage, let alone utility (you debuff, you buff, you cc, you do AE damage and you bunch up mobs).
I can post my normal feats too if it's helpful.
However you build your CW, try to avoid using Ice Storm in a team, scattering everything is generally not a good way to make friends when bunched up mobs can be smacked around with AoE abilities. Repel should be used sparingly as well and definitely does not go into the Mastery slot (Chill Strike deals better damage there, and you start with that) while on a team.
There are really no actually bad Encounter spells (with Repel being one of the least good, it's very situational), and you'll probably end up with at least a point in all of them by level 40. Chilling Cloud and Storm Pillar on the other hand are generally not as useful as MM & RoF, certain builds may find CC and/or SP useful but most should probably stick with MM & RoF.
For Class Features (ie. the passives), you should look to your main build and playstyle.
Orb of Imposition is decent until you get two other CFs or if you want to focus on lockdown (RoF + CC, Chill Strike, Entangling Force, Conduit of Ice, Icy Terrain & Steal Time).
Arcane Presence & Chilling Presence are both good for a frost build, giving you a lot of extra damage (AP needs you to build Arcane Mastery, most likely with MM). AP is also good for hybrid Arcane/Frost builds (which is most likely going to be the majority).
Evocation is good for most builds, +15% damage on AoE spells.
Storm Fury is ... You generally do not want to be below 50% HP.
Storm Spells utility will depend on the damage it does, during BW4 someone reported around MM levels of damage, which could be ok.
Eye of the Storm has a 30 second cooldown, max duration is 8 seconds. Most likely not worth your time.
Feats:
Controlling Action, Weapon Mastery, and Fight On should be in your build regardless of whatever else you want to do, they all improve your damage in their own ways. If you have other Heroic Feats you absolutely need and need more than 20 points to get it all, pick Human as your race.
Learned Spellcaster is garbage, it's 1-5% of the bonus that Int gives. So if you get +12% damage from Int, you'll get 0.6% more from this if you spent 5 points on it. Wizard's Wrath, Blighting Power, Arcane Enhancement and Focused Wizardry (note that the description for this is misleading, it's for AoE powers when they only hit a single target) are all much more worthwhile investments, each improving your damage far more for just a single point (though they're all restricted).
A pure damage build that doesn't want to be locked into a specific set of powers should pick the Renegade Paragon Feat tree. You're going to be crit focused, but that shouldn't be much of an issue. Malevolent Surge and Tempest Magic make for good backup feats.
Thaumaturge is a decent damage tree as well, though many of the feats are for specific powers only. If you're using those powers it's likely a better tree than Renegade (outside the Mastery, Chaos Magic is awesome).
Oppressor could be decent for a pure control build, but overall I'm not too impressed with it.
This is what my CW's feats look like at level 53. The remaining points will go in the first two Thaumaturge paragon feats:
Note that I have not spent the 3 bonus heroic feats that humans get. Still contemplating where to best put them.
heroic:
3 5 3 0
3 0 0 0
0 0 3 3
paragon (renegade):
5 5 5 4
0 0 0 0
I have chill strike in spell mastery (tab) and use magic missile/chilling cloud as at wills (though honestly I almost never use chilling cloud, magic missile building/maintaining arcane mastery is just too important). I have Sudden Storm, Entangling Force and Steal Time as my encounters (and will swap in Ray of Enfeeblement for boss fights in dungeons). I'm using Ice Storm and Ice Knife as my daily powers.
Basically my goal was to build something strong AE, strong single target and not crippled by chill/controls not working on bosses.
I'm in the same boat as you, I don't care so much for using ice/chill abilities and prefer to stick to mostly arcane. I haven't gotten very far since official launch yet but I played a lot during the last few betas (so not sure how much things may have changed at higher lvls yet).
That being said I ran an almost identical set up with just a few minor changes. For my tab ability I loved using Ray of Enfeeblement a lot. The damage over time effect can come in handy at times and the overall damage increase was very noticeable even solo not to mention in a group when its increasing everyones damage against the target. I never stopped using RoE though I did switch it from Tab to a normal encounter spell at times depending on the situation. For the rest of my encounters I also used Sudden Storm and Steal Time constantly but for my 3rd I used Entangling Grasp the most but switch in Chill Strike for certain encounters. I also messed around with using Ice Rays instead of Sudden Storm when I wasn't doing tons of aoe, quick root on 2 targets at start of a pull could be pretty handy a lot of the time when solo.
As you mentioned as well the build up for Steal Time could be a bit harsh but at higher levels when your using Singularity a lot it's easy to time it so that Steal Time goes off right as the Singularity ends and drops the mobs, thus extending the time they are cc'd as well as adding the aoe damage hehe. I found a lot of things with the CW later really were all about good timing / combinations.
I also didnt use my 2nd at will at all really, pretty much just magic missile. I did however put the lightning strike aoe in there to use when I was going full aoe on grps. Not sure how effective it really was though, something I'll have to test more when I get the chance.
As for elites I am a huge fan of Singularity and then using Ice Strike as 2nd for when you need the single target boss dps. Singularity is just great because it pulls everything around together which makes it far easier to hit everything else with all your other aoe's (also acting as a small form of cc) including sudden storm which can be hard to use effectively otherwise.
Overall with this and running Renegade Paragon I found the synergy to be extremely effective. Focusing on crits and having a lot of aoe you get a ton of AP generation, in most high lvl dungeon runs I could pop Singularity pretty much every fight lol. Getting AP from crits as well as more AP from hitting targets under effects of control abilities is great since your using Steal Time for AoE Control which turns into more aoe AP generation though I am not sure if any part of Singularity counts as a control ability but if so thats even more. On top of that you add the Storm Spell passive that gives all attacks a chance to deal extra shock damage and the damage numbers fly like crazy hehe.
Again though I haven't had much time to mess around with stuff ingame since official launch to see how much things have changed though with the server issues and no early access on my end. I'll definitely be looking into running the same or similiar at least setup though. Will have to check out Shield as it was utterly worthless during beta and Chill Strike more as I hear people using that a lot more it seems.
EDIT: Actually used Sudden Storm on TAB Slot during normal trash pulls since that makes it do even more aoe damage. For boss fights though would switch it with RoE so RoE was in Tab slot for a lot more boss dps.
I drop the conduit of ice on a group of mobs, then I freeze the ground and pick a srong target to hit with chill strike. Now while they're all standing on the ice and conduit of ice is lashing them, Spell Storm will proc all over the place adding a bunch of additional damage. RoF the big damagers until they freeze and whittle down anything else using MM. Pretty rare I have to drink potions.
In PvP, Thieves will either stay away from me, or just end up throwing knives because they don't want to end up in that nasty ice field.
In dungeons I do OK, but I'm not topping any charts. After reading the above posts, I will try moving some of my skills around. But in my 30's the CW just seemed to stop being fun for me. Granted, in other MMOs I've always played either a tank or healer class, so a DPS class is somewhat foreign to me. Even in STO, my main is tactical officer but I'm always tinkering with it to try and make it some sort of support tac.
Maybe I just need to reread through all my skills, and rearrange some things.
Please do.
Yeah, I see it now. I made that reply before I finished reading the thread.
Also, I think everyone is going to end up with arcane based builds at end game ... they justified giving it more damage because it doesnt have the crowd control... and it just doesnt even seem viable to keep 6 chill stacks up.
How Arcane Mastery stacks work for each skill is explained by the skills themselves in their description. The two easiest ways to build them are Magic Missile (level 1 At-Will) and Steal Time (level 45 Encounter).
The Tab power is a player nickname for the Encounter power you've put in the Spell Mastery slot (default key: Tab) which unlocks at level 10.
In other news: Storm Spell is a great passive, it'll even proc while you're channeling Steal Time (which actually hits several times during this period).
I planned to go either
18 int, 13 wis, 13 cha, 10 con, 10 dex and 8 str or
18 int, 13 wis, 13 cha, 10 con, 8 dex and 10 str
any ideas?
and my Feats: http://s1.directupload.net/images/130504/ifq2rnsk.jpg
and this is my Gameplay in a Epic Dungeon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbHfdjMlHgs
guessing power then crit for main stats on this?what are your passives
There are no penalties, and with the +2 to all by level 60, you just need to decide between whether you want the very small benefits of 12 DEX or 12 STR (at level 60). The table that shows which does what is here. Personally, I would go with the 8 in STR.
18/13/13 is fine, though in retrospect I may have gone either with 16/16/12 (and a Tiefling) or 16, 14, 14. (INT, CHA, WIS, also Tiefling). For a renegade build.
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Shield - best single spell to refill the daily meter if your able to cast it and it hits 4-5 mobs. Generally get about 1/3 of the guage using it. Bread and butter spell for dungeons and a nice group finisher.
Most CW like to DPS and go arcane. To be honest post level 30 DPS becomes secondary. You cannot finish any dungeon without good AOE control - due to the horrendous amount of adds that pop on the final boss. Before 30 all dungeons I finished on the first run and it was zerged (WOW anyone). Post 30 ive seen players zerging and dieing, and then leaving the group because no one bothers with adds. Most CW's are currently not utilising there AOE ice skills (like em or love em), and most dungeons generally fail on the last boss due to that fact. The best set up for final boss fights is Icey Terrain and Conduit of Ice (or Steal Time at higher levels). Frozen groups slows damage and allows a rogue to do what it must - stick knives in the rear end of end dungeon bosses.
The point is spec arcane as much as you want but take some CC skills because post 30 you will need them.
FuLL PVE ?