test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Baby CW looking for advice
frozenflame22
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild Users Posts: 56
I've been playing NW since early December and I have a lvl 60 HR, a lvl 42 GWF, and a (really really horrible, I just stink at that class) lvl 41 DC. I recently rolled a CW and I've gotten it up to lvl 18, but I still don't have a solid direction on where I'm going with this character. I've had fun playing so far, even though she's really just a baby, so I'd love some build advice.
So far I've been going with a fire and ice theme with all of my characters since my online screen name everywhere I go is FrozenFlame. The CW's look is heavily leaning towards ice, so I'd like the play style to match that. I understand that shouldn't be too hard since we have tons of cold powers.
I've read through several of the build guides and the CW guide, but nothing seems to really hit me as being MY build for this character. So far with my other characters, I've just gotten a general idea then modified a standard build for a better fit.
So is there anything in particular I really need to put points into? Anything to avoid like the spellplague? I'm mostly concerned about feats and paragon paths, but any advice at all at this point would be welcome
So far I've been going with a fire and ice theme with all of my characters since my online screen name everywhere I go is FrozenFlame. The CW's look is heavily leaning towards ice, so I'd like the play style to match that. I understand that shouldn't be too hard since we have tons of cold powers.
I've read through several of the build guides and the CW guide, but nothing seems to really hit me as being MY build for this character. So far with my other characters, I've just gotten a general idea then modified a standard build for a better fit.
So is there anything in particular I really need to put points into? Anything to avoid like the spellplague? I'm mostly concerned about feats and paragon paths, but any advice at all at this point would be welcome
Post edited by frozenflame22 on
0
Comments
My tips for you(pve): Go Stormspell paragon at lvl 30, the 2 passives you want to use are spellstorm and eye of the storm.(why not evocation? because it doesn't affect sudden storm. and I've run tests). For skills the best setup for aggro in dungeons, I would say is CoI on tab, then steal time(activates high viziers effect), sudden storm and shard of endless avalanche.
for paragon you get snap freeze from oppressor path and Critical (gain 5% AP on crit in a limited time) from renegade. The rest, go for thaumaturge(be smart when choosing the feats).
for that build to be effective use chilling cloud as at-will. And I wouldn't recommend using a glass cannon build. Stacking some HP till 27k+, more than 1k def , more than 1k lifesteal and some regen is essencial for a good survivability.
Now, tweak the build for your liking =P
but if you are going for PVP, I would recommend going the renegade path, half-sentinel build with 30k+ hp.
Have Fun being a CW =D.
Other than that, it depends on whether or not this character is for PVE or PVP. If it is for PVE, then choose as many of the AOE damage feats as you can. If it is for PVP, then choose as many of the single target damage/personal survivability feats as you can. You don't have enough feat points to choose both, so if you go down one path, you are going to be rather terrible at the other path.
If you rolled a low CON, my advice is to scrap it and start again, before you get too attached!
The abilities and strategies you use as you are leveling up will not be the same as the ones you use in endgame. Running through the campaign I relied heavily on tabbed chill strike and other long range attacks. Keeping my distance kept me alive. Endgame is completely different. Effective Lvl 60 mages are the ones that get up close and personal.
I would echo tourage16's advice on the sequence of encounter powers. Conduit of Ice on tab, followed by steal time, sudden storm, then shard of endless avalanche. It does truckloads of damage in pve.
You can choose to be a master of flame CW if that is what you want to do, but know that it is going to fall short of the damage a spell storm mage can do by a fair amount. One big reason is because you miss out on the Eye of the Storm class feature which grants 100% crits for around 6 seconds (it also procs >70% of the time whenever you cast steal time). It's the most overpowered ability a CW has.
The best use of your power points is to max every encounter spell and ignore every daily except Singularity, Oppressive Force, and Ice Knife.
Feats should be set up to maximize the damage of sudden storm and shard of endless avalanche. To that end I'd recommend the Thaumaturge tree and maxing out every feat that ups damage for AOE, arcane, and cold damage. Here's a really, really good build that is more detailed:
http://laggygamerz.com/forum/index.php?/topic/286-thizzger-cw-feats-and-powers/
I'm not sure that I'll do PvP. So far, the only character that I really enjoy it is on my GWF and even then it's really not my thing.
I may have too little Con. I made this mistake when rolling my HR too and now I'm really suffering the consequences (planning on a respec one way or another when module 3 comes out). My Con without campfires is 10. Is this too low? Can I salvage this character through dropping points there as they come in levelups or is a reroll really necessary?
My stats are: (This is a moon elf)
10 Strength
10 Constitution
10 Dexterity
20 Intelligence
14 Wisdom
16 Charisma
My heroic feats so far are:
2/5 Controlling Action
3/3 Weapon Mastery
3/5 Fight On
1/3 Wizard's Wrath
Can I salvage this?
Seems..an odd choice for a wizard. And that's a boatload of charisma.
I'm pretty sure your INT is more than 10. Did you mean 20? If you really only have 10 INT, then yeah reroll.
Controlling Action isn't a great feat because it is a lot of feat points for very little gain. At 5/5, you get 10% additional action points than you would have already gotten from that encounter (not 10% of your total AP pool). So if a certain encounter would have given you 500 AP, then 5/5 Controlling action would only give you 50 more from that same encounter. Since CWs tend to generate AP so rapidly anyway, it doesn't make a lot of sense to use this one. But while leveling, it doesn't really matter all that much.
Pretty much everyone has to respec when they reach level 60 so while leveling, it doesn't really hurt to put points into things that you think are interesting or just want to try out. But once you reach level 60 and you are expected to be carrying teams through add-infested T2/T2.5 dungeons, then yeah there are certain feats and powers that are more or less mandatory for the PVE CW.
If not you may want to start over. Intelligence should be your highest stat followed by charisma, then wisdom. Personally, I prefer wisdom over charisma, but I'm in the minority on that.
*edit*
ok, with 20 int your character is perfectly fine. No need to reroll a character. Just respec when you get to 60. Use the time getting to level 60 to try out all of the different encounter abilities and see how they work, which ones you like, etc.
2/5 controlling action was a mistake, it's far inferior compared to the other option, you should get 3/3 Toughness and 3/3 weapon mastery.
You should take a look at Stox CW PVE guide, you can find good stuff there. I dislike full glass cannon builds like his but it's still good if you know nothing about CW. I would also recommend human for the 3 extra feats, since CW has some great feats or Thiefling for the good stats bonus and the bonus damage.
But it's ok for a new player, nobody build a great toon first time. I would recommend you remake. Also aim for around 1500 crit, 2000 arP, 1000+ Lifesteal, 24k+ HP and 1000+ defense, around 3000 recovery and the rest in power. That's a good base, you can tweak it to your like.
Regarding races, I'm pretty set on keeping the Moon Elf race. It's really more about the look of the character than the racial bonuses, but the racial bonuses aren't awful either. Thanks for listing the stat targets because that lets me know what ratios to aim for.
I've got a few more questions now that I know a bit more about this class.
What would be the ideal end game ability scores? Do I need to bump up Con any, and how much? Is there a cap to how much Int/Wis/Cha is useful?
Is there a paragon path that is more useful to cold based wizards?
Stacks are fairly new to me. They're used in GWF attacks but I don't have to pay much attention to them. Do I need to be actively paying attention to stacks for CW?
When you respect you get to change all your ability score buffs again, but I wouldn't be choosing anything other than Int and Chr or Int and Wis. The others are tertiary.
I levelled my CW with a dreadful and bizarre set of feats through blind ignorance and I made it to 60 without too many hiccups
I'd recommend Thaumaturge as the paragon path of choice. For now , concentrate on getting to 60 and don't worry too much about making bad choices at this stage.
One, it stuns enemies. That's good for you and good for your party. Because stunned enemies aren't killing you. And if you use Steal Time right after Singularity ends it will hold all of the enemies right where they land which will allow GWF's, rangers, and other CW's to go berserk on the whole group of enemies for a few seconds.
Two, If you are using Sudden Storm as part of your rotation of spells (which you should be--it is fantastic) Steal Time will give you a few moments to get into the best position possible to cast Sudden Storm. Sudden Storm has a pretty narrow target area and if enemies are moving around you can miss a lot of them. Stunning them guarantees that they'll hold still and get blasted by your spell.
The third reason is the most significant -- Steal Time triggers the class feature Eye of the Storm a very high percentage of the time (>70% if you're in a crowd). Eye of the Storm gives you 100% critical hits for 3 seconds. That's enough time to cast Sudden Storm and Shard of Endless Avalanche which are the highest damage hitters in your repertoire. Highest damage spells + almost always critical hits = huuuuuge damage and lots and lots of dead enemies.
Typically the first two spells I cast going into a fight are Conduit of Ice and Steal Time. Not because of their damage, but because they buff the spells that come after them - Sudden Storm and Shard of Avalanche.
What are you running in Tab, and do you use Evocation or Storm Spell? I'm also 5/5 in Snap Freeze, and it sounds like you may be as well. Sorry to bombard you with questions!
I put it there because it increases the radius of the spell. With the final Thaumaturge feat Assailing Force every enemy hit by Conduit of Ice will take 15% more damage. So I figure bigger spell area means more targets hit by CoI which means more damage.
I use Evocation over Storm Spell. I don't have hard data, but I ran several dungeons with Storm Spell equipped as my second class feature and Advanced Combat Tracker running. At the end I looked at where my damage was coming from and Storm Spell did a pretty small percentage of my overall damage (I think 2-5%ish) while over 80% of my damage was coming from AoE spells. Boosting the 80% of my damage by an additional 15% instead seemed like a no-brainer to me.