this build im posting is strictly a feat build, gear selection and stats are up to you.
As for upgrading pets, check my guide (last section). some info there for you about pets, and a link to another thread about pet bonuses. its a costly thing upgrading those pets, id advise to worry about companions as a last goal. (even i have decided to neglect upgrading pets so i can fund my new ranger).
i've been doing some playing around with a build very similar to this one for a few months now, and tried out elemental empowerment vs transcended master on the test realm pretty extensively this week.
I'm curious, did you test this build with both nightmare wizardry and transcended master included? I'm getting noticeably higher damage, especially on single target, from using NW + TM over NW + EE, seeing as none of the single target encounters we're using for this build are arcane based, and thus don't apply the 10% debuff.
This means that all you're getting out of that feat is a meager 251 weapon damage component over time on each encounter strike (assuming you're using a weapon with a top end of 838), which is noticeably less than a 20% increase to your mastery encounter damage with Icy Rays, especially when you're timing it with EoTS procs to ensure crits. I'll continue testing and collecting some data to see if the results I get are consistent, but I'm curious as to your thoughts on this feat combo.
yes i tested both, are you sure you are not getting damage per second mixed up with damage? its the 3 second debuff that makes it alot better. meaning your follow up sudden storm does more, or your dailies, as well as your steal time dealing 10% more. etc etc.
same goes for single target, popping ray gives you 25% debuff, which i follow up with an icy rays or ice knife (when i can)
i'll check my numbers again, but it seems that even when using RoE, i'm still getting higher damage using transcended master than elemental empowerment, since the arcane debuff from elemental empowerment is up less than 50% of the time on single target. i still seem to eke out more damage from higher icy rays crits
i was talking specifically single target. on AoE encounters, the difference is less noticable both ways. since 3 out of 4 encounters are arcane based, elemental empowerment does seem to be slightly superior for AoE damage
as yes, in single target there is a increase towards having trancended. however I decided that elemental is far superior because it applies to party, not just self.
i agree entirely with the assessment that elemental is better overall for party damage as a whole. I was merely asking the question because you stated an increase in single target damage of 8-12% over transcended master in your original post, which i didn't believe was correct if you took both nightmare wizardry AND transcended master. just wanted to clarify to make sure we were thinking along the same lines.
i keep transcended master currently pretty much just for pvp purposes, but i'll probably be switching over to elemental empowerment once i get my pvp artifact
I have a ? about atributes for this CW build.
Will it be OK just to increase Int and Char accordingly or there are other peculiarities?
Thanks in advance.
one peculiarity is that the less CHA you have, the less useful the feat "critical power" gets. due to the 10s cooldown, however, the effect is probably rather minor.
the more CHA you have the bigger is the effect from vorpal enchantments as well. the more CHA, the less important EotS.
most players consider CHA>WIS. the bonus from INT is much bigger than any of those (in that regard wizards have it easy; for most other classes the primary ability is not clearly providing the biggest bonus).
so what's the deal with CHA? crit is hard to boost. with vorpal enchantments (if those *are* your choice) crit sev rises above 1 and then every point in crit chance is quite valuable. don't be mistaken that 1 more CHA increases your damage output by 1%. it depends on your end-gear stats. with theoretical 50% crit chance and 110% crit sev, 1 more CHA provides (1.51/1.50-1)*1.1 ~ 0.73% more damage output. the side effect of critical power (the feat) is hard to measure.
WIS is also quite strong. 1% better cooldown and 1% AP generation is nice. unfortunately, it does not help on any of the damage we deal via at-wills. again your end-gear does matter a lot, too. 50% RSI to 51% RSI increases the damage output from encounters by about 0.66%, from at wills by pretty much nothing and those of dailies by up to 1.66% if you use them every time they're ready.
(why 1.33%? a) you can use your encounters 0.66% more often and b) they generate up to 1% more (only up to, as an increase from 20 WIS to 21 WIS only results in an relative increase of about 0.9%).)
but you don't. nor can you use your encounters all the time. they're ready when you start a fight and 3 applications later everything's dead.
that's probably the main reason why CHA is more valuable to most people.
i agree entirely with the assessment that elemental is better overall for party damage as a whole. I was merely asking the question because you stated an increase in single target damage of 8-12% over transcended master in your original post, which i didn't believe was correct if you took both nightmare wizardry AND transcended master. just wanted to clarify to make sure we were thinking along the same lines.
i keep transcended master currently pretty much just for pvp purposes, but i'll probably be switching over to elemental empowerment once i get my pvp artifact
that statement was transcended/bitter cold vs nightmare wizardry.
one peculiarity is that the less CHA you have, the less useful the feat "critical power" gets. due to the 10s cooldown, however, the effect is probably rather minor.
the more CHA you have the bigger is the effect from vorpal enchantments as well. the more CHA, the less important EotS.
most players consider CHA>WIS. the bonus from INT is much bigger than any of those (in that regard wizards have it easy; for most other classes the primary ability is not clearly providing the biggest bonus).
so what's the deal with CHA? crit is hard to boost. with vorpal enchantments (if those *are* your choice) crit sev rises above 1 and then every point in crit chance is quite valuable. don't be mistaken that 1 more CHA increases your damage output by 1%. it depends on your end-gear stats. with theoretical 50% crit chance and 110% crit sev, 1 more CHA provides (1.51/1.50-1)*1.1 ~ 0.73% more damage output. the side effect of critical power (the feat) is hard to measure.
WIS is also quite strong. 1% better cooldown and 1% AP generation is nice. unfortunately, it does not help on any of the damage we deal via at-wills. again your end-gear does matter a lot, too. 50% RSI to 51% RSI increases the damage output from encounters by about 0.66%, from at wills by pretty much nothing and those of dailies by up to 1.66% if you use them every time they're ready.
(why 1.33%? a) you can use your encounters 0.66% more often and b) they generate up to 1% more (only up to, as an increase from 20 WIS to 21 WIS only results in an relative increase of about 0.9%).)
but you don't. nor can you use your encounters all the time. they're ready when you start a fight and 3 applications later everything's dead.
that's probably the main reason why CHA is more valuable to most people.
sorry about the math
Thanks for a detailed response. I actually asked pretty far in advance since right now I'm just a bit above 20 ^_^.
I rolled my main attributes as
Int - 16
Cha - 16
Wis - 12
I believe that was the best variant as I tried for at least 1,5 hours and could not get these higer altogether.
So, on my 24 now I have
Int - 20 (16 +2 for being a human + 2)
Cha - 18 (16+2)
Wis - still 12
As to high crit - I understand that it is trully one of the parameters most difficult to push up. That is why I suppose I'll stick to the 1 Int + 1 Cha strategy in case of future attribute bonuses. But I don't think I'll take Critical Power after all. 5 Paragon points just to spead up 1 daily skill for 5% with the 10 sec cooldown... Well, for me it seems the at-wills bunus of 20% is much more appealing as we use them all the time and mobs are very quick to approach us.
Anyway, this dilema is a loooong way ahead and maybe everything is going to change. The same is true for the gear and its bonuses.
CoI on tab is not optimal. Chillstrike on tab, coi, shard, steal time. Also Evocation >> storm spell.
Sudden storm may be fit in there somewhere but it's another headache to synchronize with sings, shard is enough.
CoI on tab is not optimal. Chillstrike on tab, coi, shard, steal time. Also Evocation >> storm spell.
Sudden storm may be fit in there somewhere but it's another headache to synchronize with sings, shard is enough.
This build is suboptimal.
Uhh... CoI on tab is perfect for thaurm since they get a major buff to it from capstone of the feats. Not having it on tab would be foolish.
Storm spell is better than evocation up to a certain range of gear, before evocation actually gets better than storm. I don't have the numbers off hand, I just know I've seen the post in this forum.
Sudden storm is one of the better straight DPS spells that CW have. I understand that may not be how you play, however, I would have to politely disagree about this build being suboptimal.
Uhh... CoI on tab is perfect for thaurm since they get a major buff to it from capstone of the feats. Not having it on tab would be foolish.
Storm spell is better than evocation up to a certain range of gear, before evocation actually gets better than storm. I don't have the numbers off hand, I just know I've seen the post in this forum.
Sudden storm is one of the better straight DPS spells that CW have. I understand that may not be how you play, however, I would have to politely disagree about this build being suboptimal.
Sudden storm has insane DPS potential in theory, putting it into practice would both require a lot of time getting used to and a constant distraction because it's completely useless on targets affected by a sing for example. And if there are few sings flying around you are doing it wrong. The shard is another such skill, having both of them at once is not ideal and will likely result in reduced performance.
CoI on tab is pointless, the DPS gain is marginal. The goal is to have the most AOE DPS possible. Which means a shard is a must due to it's wide AOE and massive alpha. CoI on a regular slot for nice DPS and awesome AOE debuff, and steal time for control and eots proccing.
This leaves tab for either chill strike which gains an amazing AOE potential there or sudden storm which becomes a liability.
You claim this build is effective, do you use it in CN/VT ? How long does a run take for you? How much damage do you end up dealing? What team setup?
I play oppressor spec and dislike CoI period. I don't even have any points in it.
I know the build is effective because I've seen plenty of people with that setup and it works just fine. The DPS gain for CoI is not just for your own DPS, it's party wide. Which is a multiplicative effect much greater than having it on a regular slot. Shard is also an amazing tool, I use it even as an oppressor. Since I'm MoF, I don't even do SS. I did enjoy it when I had it and while yes, it takes practice to maximize it's output.. so does shard.
In the end, I'm a PVPer. I've never actually ran CN. Nor do I have any of my characters who have open VT. So I have zero basis to answer your questions. I won't bluster or pretend I know specifics for those things either. My information is based off of what I've seen others do in other situations. Would I say it's 100% the absolute bleeding edge most efficient build? I can't. I can, however, say it's not suboptimal either, as there are plenty who DO run that setup and still get those things done.
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uurbsMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 449Bounty Hunter
Sudden storm has insane DPS potential in theory, putting it into practice would both require a lot of time getting used to and a constant distraction because it's completely useless on targets affected by a sing for example. And if there are few sings flying around you are doing it wrong. The shard is another such skill, having both of them at once is not ideal and will likely result in reduced performance.
I consider not using Sudden Storm insane. Any experienced group, which does more than one Arcane Singularity per pull is doing something very wrong. And even if you do, you can still easily put a Sudden Storm in the group if they hit the ground before you send in the Shard.
CoI on tab is pointless, the DPS gain is marginal. The goal is to have the most AOE DPS possible. Which means a shard is a must due to it's wide AOE and massive alpha. CoI on a regular slot for nice DPS and awesome AOE debuff, and steal time for control and eots proccing.
Not using Sudden Storm is pointless, as you loose a lot of AoE DPS.
You claim this build is effective, do you use it in CN/VT ? How long does a run take for you? How much damage do you end up dealing? What team setup?
Even if I'm not Grimah, I do use it in MC and VT, don't run CN that much lately anyway. And, as you should know, the damage one does depends on the group setup and therefore differs a lot. Only if you have 3-4 CW's in the group this setup kind of loses it's potential, as the 3rd and 4th CW cannot hit that much anymore with Sudden Storm and Shard of the Endless Avalanche. The fastest time I did an full MC run was less than 30 minutes with 2x CW, 1x GF, 1x TR and 1x DC.
Sudden Storm offers unmatched clear of adds on a low cooldown without target cap. Any practiced CW will be able to use it to solid effect. Standard slot Sudden Storm is far superior to Tab slot Chill Strike in terms of sheer AoE damage.
CoI in Tab has a dramatically increased AoE and offers additional control by contributing Chill stacks. Also has the nice bonus of proccing Bitter Cold for those of us who don't otherwise use a lot of Chill-stacking powers.
As for trying to gauge any build's effectiveness in dungeons by watching the scoreboard, it's far from an exact science since you can't inflict more damage than the mobs have HP. I've completed epic dungeons with other CWs where I end up with over 2x the damage anyone else dishes out partly because I would be the one initiating encounters for the party, and many mobs would be dead in my first rotation.
CoI on tab is not optimal. Chillstrike on tab, coi, shard, steal time. Sudden storm may be fit in there somewhere but it's another headache to synchronize with sings, shard is enough.
This build is suboptimal.
Read what vorphied responded to you above and try to learn something from it.
I find your posts basically an unwarranted attack towards one of the most contributing theorycrafters in the CW community.
What's your contribution, other than words and claims without numbers&data?
No build is the absolute "truth", they are just the way a person enjoys the game. One of the best CWs I play with has a full CC build for example and has ditched stuff like vorpals and even plaguefire for more interesting choices. It works out quite well for him and the party as well.
Some want to end up on top of damage dealt. Some want to be controllers. Some want to support their parties. None of these is superior to the other - just different ways to have fun with your CW.
the other guys pretty much cleared up what i would say.
and yes i run VT MC etc.
you can make a build to get higher in damage meter, why? because all the bonuses you get from this build is beneficial for the team as well as yourself. in total it does more than taking the ones that only effect self, but put 2 people with the 2 different specs together and the other one will do more. (since they get your bonuses as well as their self only ones).
I only use sing when there needs to be range/casters that need to be pulled in, otherwise i use Oppressive force, it has a hard CC and lasts longer, negates reds and just awesome. (i slot both in dungeons), using sudden storm will take getting used to, but for me i've used it so long now that its not too much trouble to get the most out of it just shuffling left or right a bit sometimes before casting.
Also COI on mastery does not do the burst you can get from chill. but coi gives debuff, much higher damage over sustained time (tough groups) and gives most AP out of the aoe spells
Read what vorphied responded to you above and try to learn something from it.
I find your posts basically an unwarranted attack towards one of the most contributing theorycrafters in the CW community.
What's your contribution, other than words and claims without numbers&data?
No build is the absolute "truth", they are just the way a person enjoys the game. One of the best CWs I play with has a full CC build for example and has ditched stuff like vorpals and even plaguefire for more interesting choices. It works out quite well for him and the party as well.
Some want to end up on top of damage dealt. Some want to be controllers. Some want to support their parties. None of these is superior to the other - just different ways to have fun with your CW.
AMEN Brotha!
Trolls will be trolls. He criticized Stox's build as being sub optimal for relying on Snap Freeze, which is probably one of the cornerstones of his "DPS Racing" build. I used a modified Kerrovittara Build before Grimah posted this build, and the modification was almost exactly what Grimah posted. There are two type of posters that I cannot stand on these forums: 1. Guys who come on and refuse to read, and want others to answer every basic question under the sun (and should be thankful that guys like URBS and Grimah have the patience of saints with their answers), and then 2. the so called "experts" who come on here trolling and not contributing. Makes me wish there was whole world PVP so we could camp someones corpse!
Have you thought about taking the 5 points from Nightmare Wizardry out and putting them in Destructive Wizardry? I havent done the math on it, so I am not 100% sure how much dmg increase you get from the combat advantage over 4 seconds (although I seem to remember nightmare wizardry proccing alot). Having the 10% increase in dmg after using Storm Pillar works really good for me, combining it with the bonus you get from Frozen Power Transfer.
Using both Chilling Cloud (first) and Storm Pillar can give a 35% dmg increase for a short time, which is enough to get a few encounters off which will hit really hard. For easy encounters I will just dont bother setting up for more dmg, but it is IMO nice to have the opportunity to do so in dungeons where mobs have more HP (VT, MC, CN)
ive tried it as an alternative to frozen power transfer (with magic missile + storm pillar as my at-will). the big issue i had was its got such a small aoe radius, and you get nothing from it in single target. But as regard to switching from nightmare?
Nightmare from my tests is the key to renegade dps, it has great snergy with eye of the storm, if your eye of the storm is up your will more than likely be critting with combat advantage (from the results i posted earlier). So to have both thaum feats + nightmare increases your dps by a big chunk. You may not see a huge change on damage meters, because you are providing it to your party. This build is essential the team buff build but the increases you/party get is more than what you would from going for the self-only ones.
My reasonings asside, if you do like using storm pillar, then go ahead and take it, but i would recommend taking out either frozen power instead, or all 10 points from renegade and putting them into transcended or bitter cold.
This ofcourse is not hard evidence, but theres a recording of 2 VT runs with my wizard + 4 others, and the same 4 others + a GWF (well geared) who does more single target than my wizard, but finished 1.5 minutes slower (about 15% difference) ofc there are other factors in play so i wouldnt use this as concrete evidence.
I consider not using Sudden Storm insane. Any experienced group, which does more than one Arcane Singularity per pull is doing something very wrong. And even if you do, you can still easily put a Sudden Storm in the group if they hit the ground before you send in the Shard.
Not using Sudden Storm is pointless, as you loose a lot of AoE DPS.
Even if I'm not Grimah, I do use it in MC and VT, don't run CN that much lately anyway. And, as you should know, the damage one does depends on the group setup and therefore differs a lot. Only if you have 3-4 CW's in the group this setup kind of loses it's potential, as the 3rd and 4th CW cannot hit that much anymore with Sudden Storm and Shard of the Endless Avalanche. The fastest time I did an full MC run was less than 30 minutes with 2x CW, 1x GF, 1x TR and 1x DC.
Why would you run with less than 3CW unless it's someone needing something?
CN is still very profitable when you have a group of CWs and GWFs who can actually DPS, whole run in less than 30 minutes atm.
Sudden Storm offers unmatched clear of adds on a low cooldown without target cap. Any practiced CW will be able to use it to solid effect. Standard slot Sudden Storm is far superior to Tab slot Chill Strike in terms of sheer AoE damage.
CoI in Tab has a dramatically increased AoE and offers additional control by contributing Chill stacks. Also has the nice bonus of proccing Bitter Cold for those of us who don't otherwise use a lot of Chill-stacking powers.
As for trying to gauge any build's effectiveness in dungeons by watching the scoreboard, it's far from an exact science since you can't inflict more damage than the mobs have HP. I've completed epic dungeons with other CWs where I end up with over 2x the damage anyone else dishes out partly because I would be the one initiating encounters for the party, and many mobs would be dead in my first rotation.
Read what vorphied responded to you above and try to learn something from it.
I find your posts basically an unwarranted attack towards one of the most contributing theorycrafters in the CW community.
What's your contribution, other than words and claims without numbers&data?
No build is the absolute "truth", they are just the way a person enjoys the game. One of the best CWs I play with has a full CC build for example and has ditched stuff like vorpals and even plaguefire for more interesting choices. It works out quite well for him and the party as well.
Some want to end up on top of damage dealt. Some want to be controllers. Some want to support their parties. None of these is superior to the other - just different ways to have fun with your CW.
I use Stox's build with a few minor modifications, it's demonstrably superior to anything else put forward.
If a mob group doesn't die from your group's alpha leaving just a few very low health mobs behind you are doing it wrong and your group is slow.
I do not understand why you come here and claim that there is one superior build, basically saying that everyone who dont follow that build is doing it wrong. There are pros and cons to Stox build, Grimahs build and all other builds. You can't get everything in ONE build, and thinking that your way is the only way to do dungeons is very ignorant.
I do not understand why you come here and claim that there is one superior build, basically saying that everyone who dont follow that build is doing it wrong. There are pros and cons to Stox build, Grimahs build and all other builds. You can't get everything in ONE build, and thinking that your way is the only way to do dungeons is very ignorant.
I agree that many builds are viable and sorry there is drama being brought into the thread.
Here is my take on Grimah's build:
1. Why is toughness not maxed? I don't know about you but 99.9% of the time I have all the mobs and all the bosses on me, which means in most runs I get gimped in damage by having to run around like an idiot and dodge.
2. Why 3 in Blighting Power and 2 in Arcane Enhancement when in your AOE rotation there are 3 arcane spells?
3. Elemental Empowerment over Snap Freeze I don't understand. I too use chilling cloud as an at will but 90% of the time by the time I would use this, there are only 1 or 2 mobs left, and if they are spread I would use mm instead of chilling. If you use this at the start of the fight, by the time you get off 1 rotation for a 5% damage boost, I will have used 2 encounters. I'm guessing it's because you use CoI on tab, which I will go into below.
4. I like nightmare wizardry, and love that another wizard can give me combat advantage with it. But with 2 wizards running it, the gain is practically nothing. I could never give up transcended master to get this far into the tree. My shard damage in my rotation is literally 100% more damage than it should be, and that's just from my buffs/debuffs.
5. I too like critical power, but bitter cold is going to be a straight 5% damage boost for my encounters. That's hard to pass up.
6. I'm not sure what rotation you are using in this and not sure if you've said? I've tried to plan it out in my head and everything kind of ends up sub par imo. With FPT I guess you open with chilling cloud? If not again I don't see the point of it, and even if you do then the mobs should probably be dead by the time you get your encounters off. The other thing I figure you might open with is CoI, which in my opinion is a complete waste of the tab slot unless you are using icy terrain as well. Sudden Storm mobs have to be grouped for, but I'm guessing there isn't a singularity in every pack? Even if there was, this encounter can miss while sing is up.
7. Please update your companion section, without a doubt the best companion we can get is Wild Hunt Rider. Stat giving companion, really?
Other than that, I will just say that my rotation is thought out for buff / debuff stacking and quick fights. I broke down in my guide what buffs stack with each encounter in my rotation, and if grimah would care to comment on his rotation I will do the same with his, but eyeballing the encounters and feats I just don't see it coming close in damage despite the comment made early in the build:
I'm actually flattered grimah posted this guide and made the switch to thaumaturge from renegade about a week after my guide was posted and I want to thank him for all he has done for the community (he even helped me with my guide!) No guide is perfect, but this one is certainly better than any of the old guides that were sitting around.
Also grimah, if you want to message me in game @stoxbox2 I will go over your single target spells and tell you how to improve on this.
I do not understand why you come here and claim that there is one superior build, basically saying that everyone who dont follow that build is doing it wrong. There are pros and cons to Stox build, Grimahs build and all other builds. You can't get everything in ONE build, and thinking that your way is the only way to do dungeons is very ignorant.
Did you mean arrogant?
The is no way this build will generate more DPS than the default DPS build that has been in use for a very long time put into a forum post by Stox.
CoI on tab is a bit more damage and a tiny bit more AoE than a regular slot coi, waste of a mastery slot.
Comments
Will it be OK just to increase Int and Char accordingly or there are other peculiarities?
Thanks in advance.
this build im posting is strictly a feat build, gear selection and stats are up to you.
As for upgrading pets, check my guide (last section). some info there for you about pets, and a link to another thread about pet bonuses. its a costly thing upgrading those pets, id advise to worry about companions as a last goal. (even i have decided to neglect upgrading pets so i can fund my new ranger).
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
I'm curious, did you test this build with both nightmare wizardry and transcended master included? I'm getting noticeably higher damage, especially on single target, from using NW + TM over NW + EE, seeing as none of the single target encounters we're using for this build are arcane based, and thus don't apply the 10% debuff.
This means that all you're getting out of that feat is a meager 251 weapon damage component over time on each encounter strike (assuming you're using a weapon with a top end of 838), which is noticeably less than a 20% increase to your mastery encounter damage with Icy Rays, especially when you're timing it with EoTS procs to ensure crits. I'll continue testing and collecting some data to see if the results I get are consistent, but I'm curious as to your thoughts on this feat combo.
same goes for single target, popping ray gives you 25% debuff, which i follow up with an icy rays or ice knife (when i can)
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
i was talking specifically single target. on AoE encounters, the difference is less noticable both ways. since 3 out of 4 encounters are arcane based, elemental empowerment does seem to be slightly superior for AoE damage
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
i keep transcended master currently pretty much just for pvp purposes, but i'll probably be switching over to elemental empowerment once i get my pvp artifact
the more CHA you have the bigger is the effect from vorpal enchantments as well. the more CHA, the less important EotS.
most players consider CHA>WIS. the bonus from INT is much bigger than any of those (in that regard wizards have it easy; for most other classes the primary ability is not clearly providing the biggest bonus).
so what's the deal with CHA? crit is hard to boost. with vorpal enchantments (if those *are* your choice) crit sev rises above 1 and then every point in crit chance is quite valuable. don't be mistaken that 1 more CHA increases your damage output by 1%. it depends on your end-gear stats. with theoretical 50% crit chance and 110% crit sev, 1 more CHA provides (1.51/1.50-1)*1.1 ~ 0.73% more damage output. the side effect of critical power (the feat) is hard to measure.
WIS is also quite strong. 1% better cooldown and 1% AP generation is nice. unfortunately, it does not help on any of the damage we deal via at-wills. again your end-gear does matter a lot, too. 50% RSI to 51% RSI increases the damage output from encounters by about 0.66%, from at wills by pretty much nothing and those of dailies by up to 1.66% if you use them every time they're ready.
(why 1.33%? a) you can use your encounters 0.66% more often and b) they generate up to 1% more (only up to, as an increase from 20 WIS to 21 WIS only results in an relative increase of about 0.9%).)
but you don't. nor can you use your encounters all the time. they're ready when you start a fight and 3 applications later everything's dead.
that's probably the main reason why CHA is more valuable to most people.
sorry about the math
that statement was transcended/bitter cold vs nightmare wizardry.
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
Thanks for a detailed response. I actually asked pretty far in advance since right now I'm just a bit above 20 ^_^.
I rolled my main attributes as
Int - 16
Cha - 16
Wis - 12
I believe that was the best variant as I tried for at least 1,5 hours and could not get these higer altogether.
So, on my 24 now I have
Int - 20 (16 +2 for being a human + 2)
Cha - 18 (16+2)
Wis - still 12
As to high crit - I understand that it is trully one of the parameters most difficult to push up. That is why I suppose I'll stick to the 1 Int + 1 Cha strategy in case of future attribute bonuses. But I don't think I'll take Critical Power after all. 5 Paragon points just to spead up 1 daily skill for 5% with the 10 sec cooldown... Well, for me it seems the at-wills bunus of 20% is much more appealing as we use them all the time and mobs are very quick to approach us.
Anyway, this dilema is a loooong way ahead and maybe everything is going to change. The same is true for the gear and its bonuses.
Icy Ray could be very situational in pve.
Apart from Valindra fight or Hrimnir/Karru 2nd boss tactics.
At least one cw should have the elemental empowerment I think.
FYI, there are actually very few rolls available. It isn't actually random number sets.
http://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Ability_Score_Rolling
Sudden storm may be fit in there somewhere but it's another headache to synchronize with sings, shard is enough.
This build is suboptimal.
Uhh... CoI on tab is perfect for thaurm since they get a major buff to it from capstone of the feats. Not having it on tab would be foolish.
Storm spell is better than evocation up to a certain range of gear, before evocation actually gets better than storm. I don't have the numbers off hand, I just know I've seen the post in this forum.
Sudden storm is one of the better straight DPS spells that CW have. I understand that may not be how you play, however, I would have to politely disagree about this build being suboptimal.
Sudden storm has insane DPS potential in theory, putting it into practice would both require a lot of time getting used to and a constant distraction because it's completely useless on targets affected by a sing for example. And if there are few sings flying around you are doing it wrong. The shard is another such skill, having both of them at once is not ideal and will likely result in reduced performance.
CoI on tab is pointless, the DPS gain is marginal. The goal is to have the most AOE DPS possible. Which means a shard is a must due to it's wide AOE and massive alpha. CoI on a regular slot for nice DPS and awesome AOE debuff, and steal time for control and eots proccing.
This leaves tab for either chill strike which gains an amazing AOE potential there or sudden storm which becomes a liability.
You claim this build is effective, do you use it in CN/VT ? How long does a run take for you? How much damage do you end up dealing? What team setup?
I play oppressor spec and dislike CoI period. I don't even have any points in it.
I know the build is effective because I've seen plenty of people with that setup and it works just fine. The DPS gain for CoI is not just for your own DPS, it's party wide. Which is a multiplicative effect much greater than having it on a regular slot. Shard is also an amazing tool, I use it even as an oppressor. Since I'm MoF, I don't even do SS. I did enjoy it when I had it and while yes, it takes practice to maximize it's output.. so does shard.
In the end, I'm a PVPer. I've never actually ran CN. Nor do I have any of my characters who have open VT. So I have zero basis to answer your questions. I won't bluster or pretend I know specifics for those things either. My information is based off of what I've seen others do in other situations. Would I say it's 100% the absolute bleeding edge most efficient build? I can't. I can, however, say it's not suboptimal either, as there are plenty who DO run that setup and still get those things done.
Not using Sudden Storm is pointless, as you loose a lot of AoE DPS.
Even if I'm not Grimah, I do use it in MC and VT, don't run CN that much lately anyway. And, as you should know, the damage one does depends on the group setup and therefore differs a lot. Only if you have 3-4 CW's in the group this setup kind of loses it's potential, as the 3rd and 4th CW cannot hit that much anymore with Sudden Storm and Shard of the Endless Avalanche. The fastest time I did an full MC run was less than 30 minutes with 2x CW, 1x GF, 1x TR and 1x DC.
CoI in Tab has a dramatically increased AoE and offers additional control by contributing Chill stacks. Also has the nice bonus of proccing Bitter Cold for those of us who don't otherwise use a lot of Chill-stacking powers.
As for trying to gauge any build's effectiveness in dungeons by watching the scoreboard, it's far from an exact science since you can't inflict more damage than the mobs have HP. I've completed epic dungeons with other CWs where I end up with over 2x the damage anyone else dishes out partly because I would be the one initiating encounters for the party, and many mobs would be dead in my first rotation.
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NIGHTSWATCH
Read what vorphied responded to you above and try to learn something from it.
I find your posts basically an unwarranted attack towards one of the most contributing theorycrafters in the CW community.
What's your contribution, other than words and claims without numbers&data?
No build is the absolute "truth", they are just the way a person enjoys the game. One of the best CWs I play with has a full CC build for example and has ditched stuff like vorpals and even plaguefire for more interesting choices. It works out quite well for him and the party as well.
Some want to end up on top of damage dealt. Some want to be controllers. Some want to support their parties. None of these is superior to the other - just different ways to have fun with your CW.
and yes i run VT MC etc.
you can make a build to get higher in damage meter, why? because all the bonuses you get from this build is beneficial for the team as well as yourself. in total it does more than taking the ones that only effect self, but put 2 people with the 2 different specs together and the other one will do more. (since they get your bonuses as well as their self only ones).
I only use sing when there needs to be range/casters that need to be pulled in, otherwise i use Oppressive force, it has a hard CC and lasts longer, negates reds and just awesome. (i slot both in dungeons), using sudden storm will take getting used to, but for me i've used it so long now that its not too much trouble to get the most out of it just shuffling left or right a bit sometimes before casting.
Also COI on mastery does not do the burst you can get from chill. but coi gives debuff, much higher damage over sustained time (tough groups) and gives most AP out of the aoe spells
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AMEN Brotha!
Trolls will be trolls. He criticized Stox's build as being sub optimal for relying on Snap Freeze, which is probably one of the cornerstones of his "DPS Racing" build. I used a modified Kerrovittara Build before Grimah posted this build, and the modification was almost exactly what Grimah posted. There are two type of posters that I cannot stand on these forums: 1. Guys who come on and refuse to read, and want others to answer every basic question under the sun (and should be thankful that guys like URBS and Grimah have the patience of saints with their answers), and then 2. the so called "experts" who come on here trolling and not contributing. Makes me wish there was whole world PVP so we could camp someones corpse!
Have you thought about taking the 5 points from Nightmare Wizardry out and putting them in Destructive Wizardry? I havent done the math on it, so I am not 100% sure how much dmg increase you get from the combat advantage over 4 seconds (although I seem to remember nightmare wizardry proccing alot). Having the 10% increase in dmg after using Storm Pillar works really good for me, combining it with the bonus you get from Frozen Power Transfer.
Using both Chilling Cloud (first) and Storm Pillar can give a 35% dmg increase for a short time, which is enough to get a few encounters off which will hit really hard. For easy encounters I will just dont bother setting up for more dmg, but it is IMO nice to have the opportunity to do so in dungeons where mobs have more HP (VT, MC, CN)
Nightmare from my tests is the key to renegade dps, it has great snergy with eye of the storm, if your eye of the storm is up your will more than likely be critting with combat advantage (from the results i posted earlier). So to have both thaum feats + nightmare increases your dps by a big chunk. You may not see a huge change on damage meters, because you are providing it to your party. This build is essential the team buff build but the increases you/party get is more than what you would from going for the self-only ones.
My reasonings asside, if you do like using storm pillar, then go ahead and take it, but i would recommend taking out either frozen power instead, or all 10 points from renegade and putting them into transcended or bitter cold.
This ofcourse is not hard evidence, but theres a recording of 2 VT runs with my wizard + 4 others, and the same 4 others + a GWF (well geared) who does more single target than my wizard, but finished 1.5 minutes slower (about 15% difference) ofc there are other factors in play so i wouldnt use this as concrete evidence.
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Why would you run with less than 3CW unless it's someone needing something?
CN is still very profitable when you have a group of CWs and GWFs who can actually DPS, whole run in less than 30 minutes atm.
I use Stox's build with a few minor modifications, it's demonstrably superior to anything else put forward.
If a mob group doesn't die from your group's alpha leaving just a few very low health mobs behind you are doing it wrong and your group is slow.
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I agree that many builds are viable and sorry there is drama being brought into the thread.
Here is my take on Grimah's build:
1. Why is toughness not maxed? I don't know about you but 99.9% of the time I have all the mobs and all the bosses on me, which means in most runs I get gimped in damage by having to run around like an idiot and dodge.
2. Why 3 in Blighting Power and 2 in Arcane Enhancement when in your AOE rotation there are 3 arcane spells?
3. Elemental Empowerment over Snap Freeze I don't understand. I too use chilling cloud as an at will but 90% of the time by the time I would use this, there are only 1 or 2 mobs left, and if they are spread I would use mm instead of chilling. If you use this at the start of the fight, by the time you get off 1 rotation for a 5% damage boost, I will have used 2 encounters. I'm guessing it's because you use CoI on tab, which I will go into below.
4. I like nightmare wizardry, and love that another wizard can give me combat advantage with it. But with 2 wizards running it, the gain is practically nothing. I could never give up transcended master to get this far into the tree. My shard damage in my rotation is literally 100% more damage than it should be, and that's just from my buffs/debuffs.
5. I too like critical power, but bitter cold is going to be a straight 5% damage boost for my encounters. That's hard to pass up.
6. I'm not sure what rotation you are using in this and not sure if you've said? I've tried to plan it out in my head and everything kind of ends up sub par imo. With FPT I guess you open with chilling cloud? If not again I don't see the point of it, and even if you do then the mobs should probably be dead by the time you get your encounters off. The other thing I figure you might open with is CoI, which in my opinion is a complete waste of the tab slot unless you are using icy terrain as well. Sudden Storm mobs have to be grouped for, but I'm guessing there isn't a singularity in every pack? Even if there was, this encounter can miss while sing is up.
7. Please update your companion section, without a doubt the best companion we can get is Wild Hunt Rider. Stat giving companion, really?
Other than that, I will just say that my rotation is thought out for buff / debuff stacking and quick fights. I broke down in my guide what buffs stack with each encounter in my rotation, and if grimah would care to comment on his rotation I will do the same with his, but eyeballing the encounters and feats I just don't see it coming close in damage despite the comment made early in the build:
I'm actually flattered grimah posted this guide and made the switch to thaumaturge from renegade about a week after my guide was posted and I want to thank him for all he has done for the community (he even helped me with my guide!) No guide is perfect, but this one is certainly better than any of the old guides that were sitting around.
Also grimah, if you want to message me in game @stoxbox2 I will go over your single target spells and tell you how to improve on this.
Did you mean arrogant?
The is no way this build will generate more DPS than the default DPS build that has been in use for a very long time put into a forum post by Stox.
CoI on tab is a bit more damage and a tiny bit more AoE than a regular slot coi, waste of a mastery slot.