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Oppressor build (need advice)
alsharys
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 22 Arc User
Hello Wizards and Wizardess,
Here is an embryo of an Oppressor build which I like to optimize before respec (since respec token don't fall from the sky).
If you have enough of old school Renegade this build is for you.
I am trying to make a control build for dungeon, without sacrificing too much damage.
Race :
I personnaly choose a Tiefling but I think humans (or even other) can make great Oppressors.
I like the stats Int and Cha and the +5% dmg on half life mobs.
I end up with 23 Int, 20 Wis and 17 Cha.
Let's take a look at feats. As said before none of this is definitive.
-Controlling Action 5/5
-Fight On 5/5, you definitely want that one.
-Wizard's Wrath 3/3, 6% more AOE damage
-Blighting Power 3/3, since the build is focused on frost spells 9% more dmg sounds a good idea.
-Prestidigitation 3/3, always good for the group and yourself.
-Focused Wizardry 1/3, because I had one last point to put. Maybe I should put more to be more helpful downing boss.
Oppressor:
-Bitter Cold 5/5, a must have since you are supposed to chill monsters
-Chilling Cold 5/5, because I'll use sudden storm
-Glacial Movement 5/5
-Controlled Momentum 5/5, more because I don't really need to lower CD of Icy terrain
-Shattered Strike 1/1 oh yes chill strike applies 3 stacks !!!
Thaumaturge (I didn't feel the need to put more points in the Oppressor tree)
-Tempest Magic : to help down boss
-Snap Freeze : to really help down boss ! 20% more damage how could I skip that one ?
Skills I use PvE :
Class features :
-Chilling Presence.
-Evocation.
I really hesitate here. I was told that Storm spell has good dps. Maybe I should focus on extending my control duration ?
I don't think arcane presence can do the trick because I won't be able to keep arcane stacks easily.
At wills :
-Magic missile, the best. I still hesitate with chilling cloud.
-Ray of frost
Encounters:
-TAB Chill strike, massive AOE damage and applies 3 chill stacks now.
-Conduit of Ice alwyas helpful, deal more damage with chill stacks.
-Sudden storm, one of the best source of damage.
-Icy terrain
I am thinking about removing conduit or icy terrain to take the Shield because you need to sty alive + pushing foes with AOE is always good.
Daily:
-Arcane singularity : a must have, disable, stack monsters, what else ?
-Ice storm : use with caution
The PvP gear is very helpful for the recovery and hps it provides (and it's easy to get). But I am sure there's better.
That's all folks, now I await your comments and advice
Here is an embryo of an Oppressor build which I like to optimize before respec (since respec token don't fall from the sky).
If you have enough of old school Renegade this build is for you.
I am trying to make a control build for dungeon, without sacrificing too much damage.
Race :
I personnaly choose a Tiefling but I think humans (or even other) can make great Oppressors.
I like the stats Int and Cha and the +5% dmg on half life mobs.
I end up with 23 Int, 20 Wis and 17 Cha.
Let's take a look at feats. As said before none of this is definitive.
-Controlling Action 5/5
-Fight On 5/5, you definitely want that one.
-Wizard's Wrath 3/3, 6% more AOE damage
-Blighting Power 3/3, since the build is focused on frost spells 9% more dmg sounds a good idea.
-Prestidigitation 3/3, always good for the group and yourself.
-Focused Wizardry 1/3, because I had one last point to put. Maybe I should put more to be more helpful downing boss.
Oppressor:
-Bitter Cold 5/5, a must have since you are supposed to chill monsters
-Chilling Cold 5/5, because I'll use sudden storm
-Glacial Movement 5/5
-Controlled Momentum 5/5, more because I don't really need to lower CD of Icy terrain
-Shattered Strike 1/1 oh yes chill strike applies 3 stacks !!!
Thaumaturge (I didn't feel the need to put more points in the Oppressor tree)
-Tempest Magic : to help down boss
-Snap Freeze : to really help down boss ! 20% more damage how could I skip that one ?
Skills I use PvE :
Class features :
-Chilling Presence.
-Evocation.
I really hesitate here. I was told that Storm spell has good dps. Maybe I should focus on extending my control duration ?
I don't think arcane presence can do the trick because I won't be able to keep arcane stacks easily.
At wills :
-Magic missile, the best. I still hesitate with chilling cloud.
-Ray of frost
Encounters:
-TAB Chill strike, massive AOE damage and applies 3 chill stacks now.
-Conduit of Ice alwyas helpful, deal more damage with chill stacks.
-Sudden storm, one of the best source of damage.
-Icy terrain
I am thinking about removing conduit or icy terrain to take the Shield because you need to sty alive + pushing foes with AOE is always good.
Daily:
-Arcane singularity : a must have, disable, stack monsters, what else ?
-Ice storm : use with caution
The PvP gear is very helpful for the recovery and hps it provides (and it's easy to get). But I am sure there's better.
That's all folks, now I await your comments and advice
Post edited by alsharys on
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Comments
It really is a pity that this skill tree is so useless, well as is the Spellstorm Mage Paragon... It looked so promising
P.S, i tried all the builds already, but i come back to oppressor
Sudden Storm is not nearly as good as it looks on paper. Until they fix it, it can't crit and has lower base damage than the tooltip indicates. You have plenty of ways to build Chill stacks without the feat for this power.
Chilling Cloud is not terribly amazing unless you are using it in a Thaumaturge build to gain the damage buff from the third strike.
Ice Storm is usually a bad idea unless it's sure to kill everything in range. Most of your powers benefit from having targets grouped together, not flung in every direction, and that goes double for group play. The AoE daze is better, if short range. Ice Knife is great to have in reserve. Otherwise Arcane Singularity is the Daily of choice in most situations.
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i second this. its true that sudden storm is terrible right now, so if you are taking oppressor dont take its feat for now. CoI and icy terrain is enough to maintain chill and freeze on the opponent if you are INT/WIS
Given the way its designed it seems like the only reason Oppressor has so many feats that focus on chill stack generation is because powers that generate chill stacks are generally not as powerful as arcane control powers. Thus, a spec that focused on control would need to have its cold powers buffed.
You mention 6 encounters. If you spec to use cold powers wouldnt it be best to use them to gain the best synergy - damage potential. IE cold build
I only see some tanky/solo feats, 5% damage accessible to every spec which just need RoF or any other cold spell on your bar.
The higher tier feats aren't appealing either: 5% less damage from chilled mobs, an improved RoF (less ticksto freeze a single target), chances to apply chill stacks with a bugged, short range, small area (but thankfully uncapped) spell which is sudden storm, IT and EF cd reduction after a killing blow, 10% more at will damage and a ramp-up boost on chill strike.
I don't see anything "control" related considering current PvE environment, where you have hundreds of adds which aren't killing you by sustained dps (so 5% less damage is not much of a factor), IT and EF cd is nice, but... gamebreaking? Maybe in 1v1 pvp.
Sudden storm applying chill is probably the least useful, since the feat doesn't give you any additional damage, so you will deal exactly the same as thaum and rene and it isnt reliable and if you are in range for SS you are probably stacking chill with IT and freezing some mobs half a second before isn't going to win you a match.
The problem is chill mechanics are lackluster cause there are 4 reasons to build chill stacks:
- 5% damage from bitter cold
- 5% less damage from cold infusion
- up to 5% damage using chilling presence
- 9% damage from blighting power
The first and last one don't need more than 1 chill stack.
Chilling presence is not better than storm spell, since CoI and IT can proc it on every tick and SSp damage is quite higher than the tick. CP is not better than arcane presence either since it works on mobs stacks and it provides the same bonus of 1 stack of AM on you (which means a single 3-hit MM or EF).
What I see as control in oppressor is a combo of tabbed CS+IT freezing mobs about 1.5s earlier. If there wasn't Arcane Singularity in the game, I would take the chance to try it, but since it is and is available to all trees, then you simply want to use it all the time and thus reducing the importance of fast freezing with IT.
The spec is small-skirmishes oriented, which seems solo/pvp, but in fact rene does more damage and doesn't suffer much from lack of control.
Like I said, I do not understand why some people seem to think that the Oppressor is a cold build. You already mentioned it yourself - the spec focuses on building cold stacks/freezing and doing that is as easy as slotting both Chill Strike and Icy Terrain, among other things. Bottomline, you only need 2 spells to cover most of the specs requirements. The rest of your encounters can be any of the CW staples like Steal Time and Shield. Consider that there are only 2 Oppressor feats that focus on cold spells, and these feats are very specific about which cold spells are affected. Bitter Cold and Controlled Momentum, the main +%damage feats in the spec, works on both cold and arcane spells.
I also believe people who think the Oppressor is a "support" spec are misguided, unless they specifically wanted a support-type CW in the first place. Based on the feats available to the spec an Oppressor is apparently expected to DPS as much as a Thaumaturge or Renegade is. You are not expected to top DPS charts like the other 2 specs, and neither should try - preemptively ending the "freeze" effect yourself is stupid, but you are expected to be able to deal good DPS regardless.
Skip Chilling Presence/Arcane Presence if you want. Like I said, the Oppressor feats only distinguish between particular cold spells and the only requirement for most of the feats to work is that you slot 2 or so particular encounter powers, along with the Ray of Ice at-will. Storm Spell will, in fact, benefit greatly from the Icy Terrain spam. Why would you even argue getting these unless you're building some sort of mutant cold-only spells spec? I can see Arcane Presence having some value in some Oppressor builds, and Chilling Presence seems like it was designed to stack with something or work in a particular synergy, but individually they are indeed unimpressive.
Then there should be another reason to spec Oppressor, because I can accomplish the same thing without these feats. CoI on Tab + Icy Terrain + Chilling Cloud create a constant overlap/refresh of Chills.
The reason is solo/pvp, not sure this is the devs intention, but it's what comes out by reading the feats in the tree.
While we do not know if all this is actually possible in practice, it does seem like this is what Oppressor's end game was supposed to be about. Combined with the old Archmage Set (essentially a 1-3 second reduction to the cooldowns of all control encounter powers, plus an extra 1-3 second reduction from a successful Steal Time cast) we'd be looking at the CW who had something like a 50% reduction to all his encounter CDs, perhaps more.
I suspect this is one of the reasons why the Archmage set's completion bonus was disabled, among other things.