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Endgame Thaumaturge Guide
runicfi
Member Posts: 269 Bounty Hunter
Attention: Due to Cryptic Studios inability to fix the vaurious bugs plaguing Feats, and having completed all content ages ago next to being capped on gear I currently just have no interest in the game, and therefore won't be updating this guide until/if I find interest to play again.
The build currently seems to be largely unaffected by the future Class Balance & Content Update -just find a replacement for Ray of Enfeeblement. I hope this guide can be kept up so players can seek for material in it. I took the initiative, someone else/you as a community can keep the ball rolling. Feel free to use the materials in the guide for one of your own, I don't mind. Atleast mention my sorry <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> if you do. Thanks for all the support.
I'll be... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhWs3DVk-FU (?)
Senrack/Runicfi of Beholder
Provide sufficient control, then do maximum damage.
Excess control is a waste, excess damage cannot be made.
Best race: Tiefling or Human
Attributes: Int > Cha > Wis
Stats:
Power ( no cap )
Armor Penetration ( seems to softcap around 1750 )
Crit ( seems to softcap around 1000 )
Recovery ( seems to softcap around 1000 )
Weapon Enchantment: Vorpal or Plaguefire
Current gearscore: 10,2k.
Some Powers ( at the moment ) are clearly awesome and some next to useless. I've respecced around 10 times to try different builds, and found one that clearly tops all the others in terms of damage. Anyhow, here's a breakdown of my findings and views on the powers from a PvE Dungeon DPS -perspective:
At-Will:
Magic Missile
The most damaging At-Will that should always be used for DPS.
Ray of Frost
Useful if you need to stun a mob or slow them down, in all honesty you will only need to use Magic Missile.
Chilling Cloud
Decent damage if you build having a lot of the Chill -damage increasing features. Loses to magic missile however. AoE of the third attack is really small and you will put out more DPS in total with Magic Missile.
Storm Pillar
Just plain bad damage from itself. Small damage and takes time to charge, during which again Magic Missile will have accomplished more.
Class Features
Mostly I use Storm Spell and Eye of the Storm. You can level up the rest if you feel like you have use for them.
Daily Powers
Ice Storm
Nice damage and a lifesaver, but don't use it in a group dungeon unless the scattering is spesifically required or you want to be an idiot and hated by your whole group. It will throw the mobs around, lower everyones DPS and possibly cause problems for the tank.
Oppressive Force
A good AoE damage ability that will also give the group time to breathe as it dazes the mobs. This is one of the better options for a Daily.
Ice Knife
A powerful single target nuke, which I personally use for bosses and elite mobs. Also stuns.
Arcane Singularity
The daily your group likes. Puts all mobs in a bunch so they can be AOE'd easily. The other "best" option for a dungeon enviroment.
Maelstrom of Chaos
Needs to be targeted and has a low channeling time, doesnt do that impressive damage. Bad.
Encounter Powers
Chill Strike
This spell should be on every CW's spell mastery slot. Deals huge AoE damage, and stuns the main target.
Entangling Force
A lifesaver, and a good source of control. I have this maxed ( one point is enough too ) since otherwise I'd have to put the points into a crappy ability. Grants great AP generation when mastery slotted.
Conduit of Ice
A decent dot that increases damage by a lot. When Feated, also lowers the mobs mitigation, increasing the effect even further. Very good if Feated or if you're going for an icy build.
Repel
Bad, except for pushing mobs off cliffs if you want to "cheat."
Ray of Enfeeblement
This is a part of my rotation and maxed, does decent damage and reduces mob mitigation, increasing everyones damage further.
Icy Terrain
The immobilization is short, the AoE is small. Nothing too great.
Icy Rays
Some people swear on this in PvP, and it is useful there. In PvE I don't utilize this spell.
Steal Time
An ability for controlling a lot of mobs. I have it maxed. Does allright damagewise, and dazes the mobs to give a breather in a tight spot.
Sudden Storm
Does decent AoE damage. Currently bugged and doing less than it should, also cannot crit.
Shield
A decent ability, not usually in my bars when doing a dungeon but can be useful in some future encounter where you will automatically die without it. Can be used to knock mobs off cliffs aswell, some even use this in their DPS rotation as it grants a huge amount of action points.
Shard of the Endless Avalanche
Takes ages to use, first to land it and then hurl it, and the end result is some minor damage, during which time you would've done 3x the DPS with other abilities. Utterly bad.
What Powers should I skill up and how?
Fully skill the powers I have slotted in my hotbars ( detailed below ) the rest doesn't matter. Entangling Force can be useful if more control is required.
What do I have in my hotbars in a PvE Heroic Dungeon for maximum damage at the moment:
Spell Mastery: Chill Strike
Feature: Storm Spell
Feature: Eye of the Storm
Encounter: Ray of Enfeeblement
Encounter: Conduit of Ice
Encounter: Steal Time
At-Will: Magic Missile
At-Will: Ray of Frost
Daily: Ice Knife
Daily: Arcane Singularity
As you can see, all are damaging abilities ( no surprise here when you want to do damage. ) And with this kit I have managed to do maximum DPS that hasn't been matched by another set of abilities in my use atleast. However, these abilities also provide crowd control. You have AS, 2 stuns, an AoE Daze and Freeze at your disposal.
Feats:
With these Feats I've achieved more damage than with anything else so far. You get action points fairly quickly, allowing for multiple dailies per fight. Your Conduit of Ice, and all Arcane Encounter spells in addition to the debuff from Ray of Enfeeblement take away a targets mitigation: pop them on a boss and watch him burn. Your at wills deal 30% something more damage, which is a huge damage increase. You also gain damage by killing mobs, and even more against targets below 30% health. All this in addition to granting Combat Advantage to your group, which again, increases damage.
PvP Guide
Spell Mastery Ray of Enfeeblement, slot in Chill Strike, Entangling Force and Conduit of Ice, kill stuff.
Attention to all Renegade -wizards!
No, your spec doesnt provide more crowd control, and it provides less damage increasing talents than the Thaumaturge build, which also includes the 2 best damage increasing Feats of your Feat tree.
The only Feat related to crowd control in Renegade is Maelstrom of Chaos providing Chill, and no one uses that crappy spell. A CW's role also isn't that of just control: it is to provide the control your group needs, and then maximize damage output. Excess control is waste. You can gain equal control in any Paragon Feat -tree by putting Steal Time and/or Entangling Force into your hotbars, or even Shard of the Endless Crappyness if you will. If you like doing excess control, go ahead. Stop posting about the things mentioned above continously, read the thread because everything you're about to say has already been discussed in it. Posts regarding above matters will be ignored, atleast by me. I don't hate on Renegade.
The day Renegade makes my CW do more damage than Thaumaturge, or Thaumaturge doesnt allow me enough control to clear a dungeon, be it T1/T2/T999, is the day I spec Renegade. Currently grinding Castle Never and Tier 2 dungeons just fine.
Post Scriptum
A plea to Perfect World / Cryptic : Make respeccing cost less, and make it cost gold/less AD. Real money for experimenting with builds, while most likely giving you as developers pointers to what abilities need changing/updating? Come on.
Also note that I do not have the spare time to answer each and every question, and I don't even have the answers to them all. Currently the game has a lot of Feats and Powers that do not work as they're supposed to, or don't work at all.
Last updated: 07.06.2013: Added Weapon Enchantments and thoughts regarding the new balance patch ( http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?196742-Endgame-Thaumaturge-Guide&p=4238941#post4238941 )
The build currently seems to be largely unaffected by the future Class Balance & Content Update -just find a replacement for Ray of Enfeeblement. I hope this guide can be kept up so players can seek for material in it. I took the initiative, someone else/you as a community can keep the ball rolling. Feel free to use the materials in the guide for one of your own, I don't mind. Atleast mention my sorry <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> if you do. Thanks for all the support.
I'll be... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhWs3DVk-FU (?)
Senrack/Runicfi of Beholder
Provide sufficient control, then do maximum damage.
Excess control is a waste, excess damage cannot be made.
Best race: Tiefling or Human
Attributes: Int > Cha > Wis
Stats:
Power ( no cap )
Armor Penetration ( seems to softcap around 1750 )
Crit ( seems to softcap around 1000 )
Recovery ( seems to softcap around 1000 )
Weapon Enchantment: Vorpal or Plaguefire
Current gearscore: 10,2k.
Some Powers ( at the moment ) are clearly awesome and some next to useless. I've respecced around 10 times to try different builds, and found one that clearly tops all the others in terms of damage. Anyhow, here's a breakdown of my findings and views on the powers from a PvE Dungeon DPS -perspective:
At-Will:
Magic Missile
The most damaging At-Will that should always be used for DPS.
Ray of Frost
Useful if you need to stun a mob or slow them down, in all honesty you will only need to use Magic Missile.
Chilling Cloud
Decent damage if you build having a lot of the Chill -damage increasing features. Loses to magic missile however. AoE of the third attack is really small and you will put out more DPS in total with Magic Missile.
Storm Pillar
Just plain bad damage from itself. Small damage and takes time to charge, during which again Magic Missile will have accomplished more.
Class Features
Mostly I use Storm Spell and Eye of the Storm. You can level up the rest if you feel like you have use for them.
Daily Powers
Ice Storm
Nice damage and a lifesaver, but don't use it in a group dungeon unless the scattering is spesifically required or you want to be an idiot and hated by your whole group. It will throw the mobs around, lower everyones DPS and possibly cause problems for the tank.
Oppressive Force
A good AoE damage ability that will also give the group time to breathe as it dazes the mobs. This is one of the better options for a Daily.
Ice Knife
A powerful single target nuke, which I personally use for bosses and elite mobs. Also stuns.
Arcane Singularity
The daily your group likes. Puts all mobs in a bunch so they can be AOE'd easily. The other "best" option for a dungeon enviroment.
Maelstrom of Chaos
Needs to be targeted and has a low channeling time, doesnt do that impressive damage. Bad.
Encounter Powers
Chill Strike
This spell should be on every CW's spell mastery slot. Deals huge AoE damage, and stuns the main target.
Entangling Force
A lifesaver, and a good source of control. I have this maxed ( one point is enough too ) since otherwise I'd have to put the points into a crappy ability. Grants great AP generation when mastery slotted.
Conduit of Ice
A decent dot that increases damage by a lot. When Feated, also lowers the mobs mitigation, increasing the effect even further. Very good if Feated or if you're going for an icy build.
Repel
Bad, except for pushing mobs off cliffs if you want to "cheat."
Ray of Enfeeblement
This is a part of my rotation and maxed, does decent damage and reduces mob mitigation, increasing everyones damage further.
Icy Terrain
The immobilization is short, the AoE is small. Nothing too great.
Icy Rays
Some people swear on this in PvP, and it is useful there. In PvE I don't utilize this spell.
Steal Time
An ability for controlling a lot of mobs. I have it maxed. Does allright damagewise, and dazes the mobs to give a breather in a tight spot.
Sudden Storm
Does decent AoE damage. Currently bugged and doing less than it should, also cannot crit.
Shield
A decent ability, not usually in my bars when doing a dungeon but can be useful in some future encounter where you will automatically die without it. Can be used to knock mobs off cliffs aswell, some even use this in their DPS rotation as it grants a huge amount of action points.
Shard of the Endless Avalanche
Takes ages to use, first to land it and then hurl it, and the end result is some minor damage, during which time you would've done 3x the DPS with other abilities. Utterly bad.
What Powers should I skill up and how?
Fully skill the powers I have slotted in my hotbars ( detailed below ) the rest doesn't matter. Entangling Force can be useful if more control is required.
What do I have in my hotbars in a PvE Heroic Dungeon for maximum damage at the moment:
Spell Mastery: Chill Strike
Feature: Storm Spell
Feature: Eye of the Storm
Encounter: Ray of Enfeeblement
Encounter: Conduit of Ice
Encounter: Steal Time
At-Will: Magic Missile
At-Will: Ray of Frost
Daily: Ice Knife
Daily: Arcane Singularity
As you can see, all are damaging abilities ( no surprise here when you want to do damage. ) And with this kit I have managed to do maximum DPS that hasn't been matched by another set of abilities in my use atleast. However, these abilities also provide crowd control. You have AS, 2 stuns, an AoE Daze and Freeze at your disposal.
Feats:
With these Feats I've achieved more damage than with anything else so far. You get action points fairly quickly, allowing for multiple dailies per fight. Your Conduit of Ice, and all Arcane Encounter spells in addition to the debuff from Ray of Enfeeblement take away a targets mitigation: pop them on a boss and watch him burn. Your at wills deal 30% something more damage, which is a huge damage increase. You also gain damage by killing mobs, and even more against targets below 30% health. All this in addition to granting Combat Advantage to your group, which again, increases damage.
PvP Guide
Spell Mastery Ray of Enfeeblement, slot in Chill Strike, Entangling Force and Conduit of Ice, kill stuff.
Attention to all Renegade -wizards!
No, your spec doesnt provide more crowd control, and it provides less damage increasing talents than the Thaumaturge build, which also includes the 2 best damage increasing Feats of your Feat tree.
The only Feat related to crowd control in Renegade is Maelstrom of Chaos providing Chill, and no one uses that crappy spell. A CW's role also isn't that of just control: it is to provide the control your group needs, and then maximize damage output. Excess control is waste. You can gain equal control in any Paragon Feat -tree by putting Steal Time and/or Entangling Force into your hotbars, or even Shard of the Endless Crappyness if you will. If you like doing excess control, go ahead. Stop posting about the things mentioned above continously, read the thread because everything you're about to say has already been discussed in it. Posts regarding above matters will be ignored, atleast by me. I don't hate on Renegade.
The day Renegade makes my CW do more damage than Thaumaturge, or Thaumaturge doesnt allow me enough control to clear a dungeon, be it T1/T2/T999, is the day I spec Renegade. Currently grinding Castle Never and Tier 2 dungeons just fine.
Post Scriptum
A plea to Perfect World / Cryptic : Make respeccing cost less, and make it cost gold/less AD. Real money for experimenting with builds, while most likely giving you as developers pointers to what abilities need changing/updating? Come on.
Also note that I do not have the spare time to answer each and every question, and I don't even have the answers to them all. Currently the game has a lot of Feats and Powers that do not work as they're supposed to, or don't work at all.
Last updated: 07.06.2013: Added Weapon Enchantments and thoughts regarding the new balance patch ( http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?196742-Endgame-Thaumaturge-Guide&p=4238941#post4238941 )
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Post edited by runicfi on
0
Comments
I know Chill has a hard time stacking on bosses. Do the other debuffs (Conduit, Enfeeblement) stick around just fine?
Also - Great to hear your opinion on Shard of the Endless Avalanche. I just picked it up last night, hoping it would be as awesome in some of the videos I saw. SUCH a pain to use... Nice damage and the knock-back is handy, but just utterly a pain in the butt to get right.
Finally, Steal Time has had a constant spot on my bar since I got it. The stun seems more like 2s for me, holding a bit longer than Chill Strike. The AoE also seems much larger and the damage feels comparable, though I'd have to check numbers. I'll try your build out, but it might be a nice swap-out for the Conduit, which I have a tough time keeping up.
What stats are u going for? crit>power>recovery or what?
Cuz in lower levels I didn't notice a huge change when I equipped gear with power-stat, does that change at higher levels?
I wouldn't be surprised if Shield gets nerfed very quickly considering the abuse of this spell for fast leveling purposes.
Yea as a Renegade wizard it's buffed pretty significantly by feats, but even without I find it really good because it instantly grants 5 stacks of Arcane Mastery.
The main stat is Power, secondary is Crit. All the rest is not much use, atleast for now. I have 30% crit ( 5 epic items, rest is blues ) and it's quite enough I've noticed.
Sustained high dps ( Power ) does more in the long run than a spiky critting one. Example screenshot removed, build changed to a higher damage one.
Personally, though, I don't necessarily agree that Thaumaturge is the best approach for PvE dps. Looking at those numbers above, those will be matched by a renegade wizard with 1000 or more gearscore less. Here's mine when I had 7300 GS:
I'm still only just shy off 8k.
Generally, this is how you can manage a crit-based control wizard (less damage oriented):
AW: Magic Missile
AW2: Ray of Frost
Tab: Chill Strike (Or swap for Steal)
Enc: Steal Time
Enc: Entangling Force
Enc: Conduit of Ice
Dailies: Knife and Singularity (really the only ones to use, from my experience).
Rotation: Chill strike (stun biggest mob present, you'll 1-shot most of the minions), then Conduit of Ice (lockdown usually happens with full chill stacks here), MM until they are in melee range, Steal Time (kills most of the rest of the mobs), Entangling force and MM any survivor (singular).
Also, shield does a decent burst damage along with the pushback wen you "pop" the shield (don't know if you tried that yet or not) and it does place arcane stacks on you. This may have changed since beta, but I recall it was 2 or 3.
I also run Power/crit/Recovery, im still gearing but little over 3k power, 28ish crit and 15% cooldown reduct
Ah well, I won't go into a race but with Thauma I've had the best results personally. Damage is dependant on many more factors too than build ofcourse, such as how well you manage your rotation and your placement. Can't say I was tryharding for my damage in my screenshot, mostly I play relaxed ( because T1 epic dungeons are just that easy. ) I just posted it to show that atleast you can beat Rogues. This is all just to say that me not having the best damage done ever in this very screenshotted instance run doesn't mean its the builds fault. I guess one factor might be that I was just kiting the last boss whole fight as the tank couldnt keep him off me.
I do agree that Renegade might work well too, though, since I considered using that first ( my first 2 respecs. )
Also, building a wizard for dps will be moot when Warlocks come in, as they are pretty much the striker caster, not to mention War Wizard, but no eta on those.
I hope the Warlock won't just be a copypaste from WoW. That'd be boring.
I really wish respeccing could be done effortlessly. I'd like to try your build and see how it compares to renegade with my current gear. I hope we'll get a test server at some point.
edit: The above was in response to runicfi.
Yeah. Respeccing costing money/ridicilous amount of AD I hate. I don't even want to know how much I spent on that alone. And the way skilling up is ( somewhat forcing you to take things you will never use in Powers. ) I like the "so much stuff, so little points to spend" -feeling you got from WoW before more. Meaning, you had more talents/skills you want than you had points, not the other way around, if someone understands what I mean. The way Feats are in this game.
It's not. Haven't seen a single applied DoT in the game yet, even from mobs (save for spider poison). I'm pretty sure the in-game warlocks are a pretty good indication of how this class will be (basic abilities, anyway).
The powers tree does feel very "loose". I cringed every time I had to put a point into a spell/power that I really didn't want, but had to get so I could get to the next tier. There was never really a hard choice to make, just the question which of the options "sucks less". Then again, it's not necessarily a bad thing, especially with the respec situation: it's much harder to really mess up a character.
In WoW, I played mostly druid (mostly feral, but early on tree, then in WotLK usually moonkin, then back to cat), where there weren't many choices to make because all those different roles had to fit in the three talent trees. On my mage I found that much harder because there was so much good stuff all over the place.
Which NW server do you play on?
On to more relevant discussions though, I'm curious about a couple of choices.
1) Why did you avoid Fight On, particularly in favor of the 1 point in Battlewise and points in Controlling Action. Considering we gain AP via damage, if we able to cast our encounter spells (which is the vast majority of our damage) more, we do more damage and thus gain more AP in a given time frame. The AP generation will not be as high as with Controlling Action, but the extra damage should lessen that gap considerably.
2) Do you have any hard numbers from Learned Spellcaster? Intelligence gives 1% bonus damage per point about 10. If I read this feat at it's literal interpretation, 5% of a 1% bonus is just a 0.05% bonus. Is this feat operating differently?
3) Not directly related to your build, but can you explain exactly how Combat Advantage works? Is Nightmare Wizardry just a waste in group play? The definition on the wiki just states, "When attacking an enemy, if there is an ally attacking the same foe from the opposite direction, both players involved will have Combat Advantage, dealing bonus damage.". In a 5 man group I imagine this should always be the case, so does that make Nightmare Wizardry worthless.
4) Does Chill stack on bosses in epic dungeons? Can you keep it stacked permanently at 6 stacks if you want to?
edit- 1 more question:
5) Does Focused Wizardry affect all AOE all the time as the feat would indicate on live server, or is there some hidden condition that it only works when using AOE spells on a single target like previous builds and many calculators suggest?
Yes, basicly: Spam Chill Strike (Spell Mastery'd) and Sudden Storm. Take the Shield for a life-saving Knockback or medium Dmg-Absorb and the Grip for sticky situations aswell. Daily, mostly Oppressive Force and the Ice Dagger.
Done.
It's horrible how much junk spells the CW has... especially the OH-SO-POWERFUL "endgame" abilities. Meh.
A reminiscent from the build I posted first, with those two feats being the only difference. Removed.
Fully leveling Fight On would be a decent increase, just one point most likely irrelevant at best. Statistically ofcourse, even a 1% reduction in CD is increased damage, but in practice, not so much. Regarding AP generation, my Ice Knife for example is critting for ~21k, so its quite a difference to do it 4 times per bossfight than once or twice, compared to 1 point in CD reduction. I'm having difficulties with aggro as it is. I think I'll have to disagree on the majority of damage part, but I can't prove it ofcourse. It seems to me Magic Missile with the 30% increase to its damage would be the biggest source of damage, which is another reason. Sometimes I seem to do more just spamming that than using some of the Encounters.
I interpret it giving a 5% damage increase from your intelligence compared to what it "normally" adds, but I can't know for sure. No hard numbers until someone creates a damagemeter/tool.
For the sole point you presented ( being in a group ) I too, have ignored looking into Combat Advantage completely. Its a flat damage bonus, but I didn't find how much either.
I've tried, and haven't managed to keep it at 6 ever. Elites and Bosses seem to shrug the debuff off really fast. I have no idea why. Perhaps a blunt/poor way not to get them Frozen?
I'd guess it affects all AOE damage. But I can in no way see that; I presume the devs have actually tagged all AOE abilities as AOE damage. If they haven't, tough luck for us all.
I hope my findings and 100% honest replies have been of use to you. Bear in mind these are just my findings so far that have worked for me. I'm not that excel board guy with the calculator.
mitigation
Beholder mate.
Points from aggro reduction and 6% damage to AoE switched to Encounter Cooldowns.
Reasoning:
6% damage to AoE is a smaller damage increase than a 10% CDR to all Encounter Spells. I'm taking aggro even with one point in threat reduction ( even with 3 points, infact ) so it's basically useless and also has nothing to do with damage.
For a blunt example, it's better doing 10 Ice Strikes than doing 9 Ice Strikes with 6% increased damage in the same amount of time.
Updated guide, fixed typos and my gearscore, and added some description to what the build does at the end of the guide.
Reasoning: I don't have anything better to do.