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The CW revamp in the months ahead
davecheese
Member Posts: 170 Arc User
Regular forum readers will know that there's lots disagreement about what's right and wrong about our class. A Dev has said in another thread:
Taken from http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?635191-Official-Feedback-Thread-Great-Weapon-Fighter-Changes&p=7577631&viewfull=1#post7577631
Firstly, I'd like to look at the last sentence there for discussion. What is our role? We're called Control Wizards, so in my opinion this is crowd control, not damage dealers. The idea that raw damage is a form of control is a very blunt definition to me! Control could also include party based buffs, such as Prestidigitation.
It would be very easy for everyone to think we need a buff, but as the Dev said, there's a lot of dials and we provide too much damage. I therefore would expect a nerf before a buff, and I suspect any changes will come in small stages so they can evaluate the impact and balance.
Presuming all bugs get fixed (a long shot, but hey!) I'd like to ask readers three questions:
1) Regarding Feats: which ones are overpowered? Which would you never choose?
2) How would you make the paragon paths more role defining?
3) How would you make the class more interesting (and less cookie cutter perhaps) to play?
To be perfectly frank, the CW is very much out of line right now. They provide too much damage and their AoEs don't really conform to the same damage rules as they ideally should. But we have looked at various reasons as to why they cause problems and some of that lies in their feats, some in their base ratios, some in target caps, and that is really quite a few dials to tune all at once. We are looking at where they belong and what role they need to fit into in combat, as well as ways to preserve some roles that players enjoy without making them the best option at all times.
Taken from http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?635191-Official-Feedback-Thread-Great-Weapon-Fighter-Changes&p=7577631&viewfull=1#post7577631
Firstly, I'd like to look at the last sentence there for discussion. What is our role? We're called Control Wizards, so in my opinion this is crowd control, not damage dealers. The idea that raw damage is a form of control is a very blunt definition to me! Control could also include party based buffs, such as Prestidigitation.
It would be very easy for everyone to think we need a buff, but as the Dev said, there's a lot of dials and we provide too much damage. I therefore would expect a nerf before a buff, and I suspect any changes will come in small stages so they can evaluate the impact and balance.
Presuming all bugs get fixed (a long shot, but hey!) I'd like to ask readers three questions:
1) Regarding Feats: which ones are overpowered? Which would you never choose?
2) How would you make the paragon paths more role defining?
3) How would you make the class more interesting (and less cookie cutter perhaps) to play?
Post edited by Unknown User on
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When it comes to the control aspect of our jobs, there is no contradiction between crowd control and dealing damage. From D&D 4e:
http://dnd4.wikia.com/wiki/Controller
(emphasis added)
CWs are SUPPOSED to deal AOE damage. That IS a form of control. A dead mob is a controlled mob.
But I think the "OR" conjunction in that sentence should be taken seriously. Individual CWs should not be excellent at both crowd control AND dealing damage. If a CW chooses CC as his/her preferred mode of control, then that CW's damage dealing abilities should be limited. And vice-versa, if a CW chooses AOE damage as his/her preferred mode of control, then that CW's CC should likewise be limited.
One way to do this might be to set relatively low target caps on all of our abilities (say, max of 5) as well as relatively low base damage amounts, and then have paragon paths that have feats which would EITHER (a) increase the target caps, OR (b) increase the damage amounts.
But this also has to be done carefully, because CWs also have to be able to solo level, and you don't want to have too low of base damage amounts such that it makes it almost impossible for a new CW to level through the content.
Just a few thoughts.
That would be an incorrect assumption right off the bat... because we're not controllers at all and have never been.
Once you give up on that assumption... your entire vision of what the class ACTUALLY is, will clarify.
It is a mistake to assume Single Target CC is somehow going to cut it or even get used in grouping... its not and never has other than once upon a time to gain AP with but no other real reason. Those powers have always been for solo play designed to assist wizards in getting high enough TO group. Most of the rest of the Classes only want their Singbots back... and that's the extent of it because they never knew anything about the class other than that.
I already know what the Devs are talking about and why.
Accept this truth...
There ARE NO ACTUAL CONTROL POWERS on the CONTROL WIZARD... that are for group play... other than Singularity.
The rest are all damage powers that can add a component of CC... but do not exist primarily as CC powers and never have (much like the GWF's CCs).
Then accept the fact that CWs are the most versatile, well built skill/feat trees the devs have ever done because there are so many possibillities they can be configured in many ways to achieve the same things. And every CW... even if they are built the same... uses different powers and configurations to acheive those things. The base damage of the CW is actually very low in comparison, but... due to the spell mastery slot and feats... CWs are able to use Encounter powers primarily rather than At Wills unlike other classes.... and configure them with multiple components that add a brief... CC effect... but generally its only a one or two second one...
These are not powers that START as CCs and add damage... they're Damage powers that add brief CCs IF you feat them AND put them in the mastery slot. But those are only the components you can add through the spell mastery slot to the base powers... not the actual power itself.
Other classes have maybe one... or two AoEs... this is the only class that has them literally coming out of its ears... and more...
And in an environment where you're having 10+ mobs thrown at you all the time... no other class is capable of handling this.
As it stands, the various classes can mostly do the jobs they were designed to do. It's just that a number of those jobs got left out of the dungeons.
Lightning teleport - don't have stamina problems, and if I did I would want it when enemies were alive rather than after I killed them.
Energy recovery - insignificant heal, unreliable, outshined by lifesteal
Unrestrained chaos - a minor unreliable benefit on a questionable daily power
Far spell - minor benefit considering how little we rely on at-wills and I usually want to be fairly close anyway
Twisting immolation - I'm reluctant to feat dailies unless they gain a significant benefit or additional utility. If I'm using FI it's because I want to deal damage, I have better options for cc.
Drifting embers - spreading smoulder is already pretty easy and this is not a very effective way to do it
Arcane burst - scorching burst does low damage and smoulder doesn't stack so it's bad for spamming, but the low chance to gain a stack would only seem worth it if I was spamming it.
Severe reaction - low range, low reliability, minor benefit
Brisk transport - too little movement speed for too little time to make a difference
Chilling control - too unreliable for a short ranged spell on a cooldown
Spellstorm is pure personal dps, which is undeniably effective. I don't think it needs to change much. Maybe I'd make stormfury always active and have chilling control apply to it.
For MoF I try having smoulder/rimfire tick immediately upon refresh (thus making Scorching Burst a little better and hopefully fixing the bug with Rimfire's damage being delayed by Icy Terrain and tabbed CoI), replacing the fire vulnerability on combustive action with an effect that makes smouldering targets grant more ap to their attackers, increasing the debuff on swatch of destruction to 3% per rank, and making rimfire part of critical conflagration instead of being inherent. This makes the MoF the team support paragon that grants increased group dps/ap but less personal dps.
For most classes I would make t1/t2 paragon feats utility and put the damage feats in t3/t4 (adjust damage accordingly where necessary), and make the capstones more role defining. This is because utility choices provide more flavor and variety while damage feats are just about min/maxing. It would also make balancing the trees/classes easier.
For cw, I would then base the trees on speed (cast speed, movement, recharge, ap generation, interrupts/knockback, etc), burst (upfront damage per activation, stronger cc effects such as making chill strike into a prone, longer cooldowns), and duration (damage over time, buffs/debuffs, longer lasting cc). All three trees are thus able to dish out damage and cc effectively but in different styles.
For heroics, maybe something like make prestidigitation 1/2/3/4/5%, learned spellcaster 2/4/6%, make blighting power increase the slow effect of chill, have arcane enhancement increase the effects of arcane mastery (maybe by increasing the stack cap), and have focused wizardry give all at wills a 3/6/9% chance to build a stack of arcane mastery and apply a stack of chill.
I really like the idea of more hazardous terrain. Placing such features effectively requires skill which makes the gameplay interesting. It's probably unlikely to happen, but I like the idea of a wall of fire, forcing mobs or players to have to run around it or take damage if they run through it.
Who here would happily trade Damage for more Control? (perhaps in just one specific feat tree?)
Steal time? Icy terrain? Shard? All of those either immobilise or prone everything.
Hell, even OF stuns everything.
My point of view isn't about what is overpower or such but more what we need to change to better feat in our role.
1- We aren't a support class.
>> DC are a support class, it's there job to put debuff on mob and to give us buff. But an huge part of our power (feat/...) give attenuation/mitigation/etc. Even our 4-pieces bonus is all about it. As example, a MoF thaum will debuff 5 targets for 21% with only CoI.
I suggest to remove most of our debuff to only keep some for PvP purpose and minor one. It will help support class and damage balance.
2- We are a control class, in both PvP and PvE.
In PvE, our job is to control in mass. And in PvP, it's our only way to survive.
I propose to increase the target number cap for reducing the CW stacking in dungeon. For Daily power, I see some think like 12/15 for control power (AS/IS/MoC) and 8 for more damaging power (OF/IF).
I propose that Repel can affect 3 targets when outside of tab and 8 when slotted, for Shield explosion and Steal Time too, and also for Shard maybe.
3- our 3 path should be useful and more clear.
If I keep my logic in #1, a lot of feat will need new effect since they don't give debuff/buff. Starting with the big one.
I propose to make a standardization of each tier in the path. So globally we can have :
tier 1 - situational feat like more damage if target below 30% HP, give damage buff if target have chill on them, etc.
tier 2 - Survival feat (see #4) like the one that repel on hit or that give temporary HP.
tier 3 - At-Will feat like the thrid strike of CC give a damage buff.
tier 4 - Encounter feat like more damage with shard or cooldown reduction on kill.
tier 5 - specific feat with both PvP and PvE effect
for the last feat, I propose :
Oppressor - Chill Strike increase Crit chance by xx% for y second, increase the max number of target to 3/8 and affected target receive 3 more chill stack.
Thaumaturge - CoI increase damage by xx% for y second, increase the max number of target to 3/8 and affected target have a chance to receive a chill stack.
Renegade - Entangling Force increase recovery by xx% for y second, increase the max number of target to 3/8 and give you 2 more arcane mastery stack.
4- survivability
Outside of slotting shield, we don't have a lot of survival specific tool for damage absorption/prevention.
I propose to add some feat that proc a shield on some condition, to extent the length of the repel (because of tenacity), etc.
Of course, if you subscribe to the school of thought that damage is a form of control, then every power from every class is a control power! Control Great Weapon Fighters, Control Trickster Rogues etc...
I would describe a control power as anything that stuns/prones/freezes etc, which appears to be the definition the game applies (feats etc that are of the "do X more damage to enemies affect by a control power").
For me, I use the power that work with SW set and all the daily :
Shards is a damage spell, its got a 1 second prone... that's it... that is not a control spell, its a high damage spell with a tiny little component... that's it...
Icy Terrain takes what 4 ticks to actually freeze something, that's a lot of dead people in party before it actually works to control a crowd. Do you know what its REALLY used for?
Some mages have feated certain thing that allow them to increase their damage on every target that's got a stack of Chill.... Its NOT used for crowd control because it doesn't work fast enough. Its pretty useless as a general crowd control utility.
Steal Time... actually this one you may have a point on...
However that leaves a one whopping actual control spell... the rest don't do anything even remotely close...
Well if that is your definition... then you've never seen what a True control class does...
Like AoE Mez, Stuns that last 6 seconds but do no damage... AoE Dazes that daze the crowd for a good 6 seconds, Paralyze that lasts a good 6 or more seconds.
That's a REAL control class in any other game.
By your definition... it means the GWF is a controller class not an actual Striker. Because their powers have the same components. But theirs are stuns, knockdowns, and bashes...
By your definition... GWFs and CWs are BOTH controller classes.
I agree we are ill equipped as a support class.
Think this one through
Do you honestly think... that lowering the caps of the AoEs will result in Less wizard stacking... or MORE wizard stacking as more wizards will be needed to do the same job one used to be able to do...
I think your proposal would only make the situation worse. This type of thing has been tried before... yes our target caps were nerfed prior... it ONLY resulted in MORE wizard stacking.
Your methods would make the situation worse. Past history shows that's exactly what it does.
A little background for you... the more and more they've Nerfed CW powers in the past, the more an more people stack wizards to get through the content...
What I suggest is to increase the target cap of some spell, not to reduce it for exactly what you explain.
Actually, we have daily than can control 8/12/15 targets, then encounter that have a limit at 5, 5 when on tab and only 1. The only exceptions are OF and IT that have no limit. I propose that OF go to the same limit that AS for not being too powerful. And IT is low at both damage and control. It's only useful for chill stacking with Chilling Presence and/or for smolder proc on crit.
So I propose to put some encounter at 8 targets when they are on tab and through last feat. And some power that have 1 target outside tab to increase it to 3, in this case.
Oppressive force is going to be given a target limit. 15 at the most, probably 8 or 12. I'm not sure they'll touch Singularity's target cap of 15, but wouldn't be surprised if it's lowered.
Sudden storm is going to be capped at 5 targets.
Steal Time will be fixed so that it only counts as a single encounter power per cast, and not each tick.
Conduit of Ice will be fixed in the same way. Currently, each tick of damage counts as an encounter spell for things like EotS procs.
The initial damage on shard slam will be removed. Shard slam will still knock targets down, but you'll only get damage from the explosion part.
You make those few changes, and you've taken a lot of the possibly unfair "bite" out of control wizards. It would be nice if it came with a revamp of the oppressor tree so we have a more "control" oriented Paragon tree, but don't hold your breath on that.
But in my humble opinion, there's only one big change that needs to be made to the CW to significantly boost the ability to be more control and less damage in group situations.
Orb of Imposition: Now reduces the the effect of damage breaking frozen targets early by 33/66/100%.
Currently, when you freeze someone in a dungeon, they break free almost instantly because of the damage they received. If you had the ability to keep frozen opponents frozen for the normal duration, you'd see a stampede of team-oriented CW's towards frost-based control builds, and the demand for a single CW "frost spec'd" would go through the roof. And if you change it so that chills don't stack, you eliminate the need for multiple CW's to stack chill faster.
For Shard, Why not making it explode on first impact : 1 damage and 1 prone from the explosion. More user-friendly, no more "slipping" between 2 mobs. For "double" prone, it just need to be on tab slot.
There's very little need for a 6 second daze, since everything will usually be dead within two or three seconds. The game isn't really designed around this being useful. Mass packs of dudes are usually easily murdered, and big nasty dudes who you might _think_ would be worth dazing are usually just ignored for the 3 seconds it takes to murder all the easy dudes, then focus fired.
As for icy terrain taking "so long to achieve freezing that you'll have dead party members"....honestly, if your party dies that fast, that easily, a faster freezing spell is NOT going to make a difference.
Besides, it's very rare you just spam it down and kite stuff around long enough for it to freeze: you pop it down while they're bunched/stunned from something ELSE, so that by the time ST wears off (or whatever), they get promptly frozen, which holds them long enough for you to shard them, which knocks them down long enough for you to use steal time again. Rinse, repeat, throw in a sing to keep the GWFs happy.
What you're doing there is basically control with near 100% uptime, and the fact that this ALSO does a ton of damage is just a nice bonus. My CW is in a crappy mix of blues and T1s, so less good on the damage side, but the control elements of the above pattern are not gear-dependent. You can effectively lock-down a huge number of dudes, regardless of how long it actually takes you to kill them. This is more or less exactly what I'd expect from a controller.
They have control elements, sure. GFs can use FS and bull's charge and so on. Hey, DCs have chains and flamestrike and guardian of faith: they must be controllers too! Oh, and TRs have smokebomb dazes, and HRs have snares. Everyone is a controller!
Or perhaps, not everyone is a primary controller. If you want to keep 15 enemies essentially stuck in place and unable to do anything, do you ask A) a GWF, or
At what gear score... 15k? Yes its true... once you hit double the gear score the dungeon's minimum is... that is how fast the mobs drop... but not at a 12k.
At 12k when you are fighting that many mobs with a group, they will slaugher you in less than that time. But test that out in Frozen Heart Spellplague bosses, you will be surprised your theory does not hold water there at a general 10-11k a party hits it at.
Or... the 12k gs that CN was originally designed around.
You're going to be shocked I'm sure...
Thats literally the only way it works... but only lasts approximately 1 second before its broken and they're moving again.
You're confusing the Steal Time effect with the actual Icy Terrain spell... Icy Terrain is used only as a debuff for chill stacks... its actually a worthless control spell because it takes so long for it to stack that much chill... and once its on the targets, it breaks almost instantly.
Yes...
I have actually used the spell... and at the correct gear scores and in multiple dungeons. It is not and never has been an effective tactic.
Steal Time is... Icy Terrain however... is next to useless outside of being a debuff.
Already attempted that...
Failed miserably in Spider Queen, Boss fights in MC and CN... and Frozen Heart, and Spellplague. But it did get the party wiped out pretty fast...
Absolute failure.
Neither one... Because neither one can do it for longer than a couple seconds. BUT BOTH actually can do it. GWF just needs them all in a bunch in front of him. CW needs them in a circle around him.
Its time you stop looking at this class for what you WANT it to be... and look at it as what it really is...
Ok... which basically takes away any and all differentiation between a Spellstorm and MoF... and removes all powers of the Spellstorm vs the MoF.
Minus Eye of the Storm and its procs... there's no difference between the way they both actually do damage, if anything you just unbalanced both.
Spellstorms do just that, they are fast strikers and spike damagers. It is Eye of the Storm that differentiates them from MoF.
MoF has a ton of DoTs they stack on a target while using the same Spellstorm Nukes to create the same effect.
Both equally effective, but Spellstorms do it instantly, MoFs do it over time. I have played both They lied to you about MoF being less effectiving. The difference is in how they do it.
Removing the effectiveness of Eye of the Storm from Spellstorms is akin to removing Smoulder from MoF. Would you really advocate that?
...Maybe try dodging?
Also, try not using it on control-immune monsters? In FH you shouldn't really be trying to control the pack of trolls&golems until the boss is dead, anyway. Either kite them or kill them, but otherwise focus on boss (if single target) or archers, which are happily controllable.
And in spellplague the zombies are completely control immune when boosted, and easily killed when not, but in both cases are basically ignorable entirely, because they're not the threat.
All encounters are situational, as they should be. Icy terrain has a lot more utility than you give it credit for. Plus the freeze also counts as an interrupt, which is always nice.
I dunno, I'm getting a lot of "X Y and Z is useless" negativity from you here, which since we're talking about the most ludicrously overpowered PvE class in the game, seems odd. What does your usual "generic dungeon running" bar look like?
Also, I'd love it if you could tell me how to lockdown 15 dudes as a GWF, coz that sounds really useful.
Heh Look man,
I totally agree with you, I just was advising I have attempted the exact same tactic the individual advised in many different locations and situations. It just ended up in a dead party... it doesn't activate fast enough as a control power, and when it finally does, it doesn't last long enough. So... it fails pretty miserably as a control power.
Even in situations most favorable. Like Spider Queen where its actually needed.
Well that makes my point for me as I was not talking about the ending abolith boss, and I am not a newbie I know that,
I was talking about the earlier Boss Mobs.
It does, its a great debuff.. when you have chill feated properly... but as an actual control encounter power, it falls far short because it takes far too long to activate, and I have tried all methods of using it in every situation I needed pure control.
It fails at control, but its a great debuff if you have the proper things feated.
Lol well he was exaggerating as well, you can't lock down 15 dudes as a CW either, You've got 3-4 seconds that's it, if you haven't killed them all by that point, they're going to kill you and the rest of the party, because there's no other actual control power that can keep 15 mobs from destroying you and the rest of the party.... other than damage.... namely AoE damage.
You can only briefly stun them before they charge again and then you don't have anything that will continue from there. The GWF has a knockdown that affects all targets in front of him so if you stack a bunch of mobs on top of him, he'll knockdown whatever is in front of him. I know its at least 5 targets.
It is true that they don't end up frozen for very long. But they stay on there long enough to get the 6 chill stacks applied to them - not all of which come from the Icy Terrain itself, a lot of it comes from Conduit.
Yeah Conduit is an excellent control power...
....kinda... in order to give it that, you have to have it in the spell mastery slot. It does not have that by itself... alone its only a mediocre damage spell.
Properly feated and on the Spell Mastery slot it becomes an excellent debuff combined with a slow... but the base power does not have that.
There it will actually act as an AoE slow and apply enough stacks fast enough to slow them along with a DoT... but this does have to bbe properly feated. But that's only a component you add to the base power through spell mastery... not the actual spell itself.
And it's not half bad at interrupting the sniper-gnothics, either.
And the interrupt works on the second boss, too, which given the gigantic red-zones he spews out, is quite handy.
And it's not target capped, so you can more or less sing everything into one spot, IT that spot so they start freezing and taking damage ticks the instant they land, hit them with ST so they have to stand there taking the freeze ticks, ST wears off and they promptly freeze, you shard them and by that point you're ready for another round of stunz and funz. You might need to blink about the place between the odd encounter, but that's about it.
I've...honestly never felt like I didn't have enough control. In any situation where the mobs ARE controllable, it's more or less a faceroll, even at 10k GS.
As for knockdowns from GWFs, if they're IVs it's frontline surge, and as far as I know frontline surge is capped at 5 (though it used to be 3, hilariously). If they're swordmasters, then...I don't think there are any multi-target knockdown encounters.
That's not possible my friend, 4 ticks is not enough to time to freeze them on spawn in.
Tried it... again failed...
The only way that Icy Terrain works as a control spell is in the way that Pointsman described... and then its not even Icy Terrain that does it... its CoI... that pushes it up faster.
I don't know who told you that stuff works the way you described... but they lied to you.
If you're going to argue that it only works with COI, you might as well argue that it only works with ST and sing and shard, too, but I kinda figured that was the whole point: encounters have synergy, and IT synergises very well with all of those.
Anyway, the person who did all that stuff was...me, and it totally works, so....I guess we'll have to agree to disagree?
No... the rest of the spells are effective on their own and don't need any help.
Icy Terrain needs a horde of other spells to be cast in order for it to be effective... UNLESS... you just feat chill properly and use it as a debuff... it is a bad control spell.
Then it works very well as its own spell but as a debuff spell not as a control spell... it fails miserably.
CoI can work alone as an effective control spell... but ONLY on the Mastery Tab... it does not have that on its own as a base power.
This what I said in my original post... there are no actual control powers for grouping in the control Wizard... They are only components you can add through feating and spell mastery to MAKE a control power... the base powers are only damage spells you can ADD a CC component to...
They are not control spells by nature. They are damage spells with control components POSSIBLE but have to be feated properly. Once one understands this, you can finally have a clear vision of what the CW actually is... and its not an actual control wizard... its a damager who can add control components...
Also, steal time and OF don't count?
I basically view it as "control powers disrupt enemy movement/attacking", so stuns, prones, freezes, etc all count. And while every class has some powers that can do that, CWs are the only class where the entire encounter bar, and both dailies, can satisfy that benchmark. In a wholly AoE context, with many of those having NO target cap.
It's pretty obvious from the way the meta is going that "lack of control" is not a problem CWs have.
Steal time is about the only exception to that rule...
This one actually does have a stun component to it that does not need other spells to function properly.
OF while nice is still a damage spell... with... a Daze component and a Daily.
ONLY if you add the correct components and in the correct build/order/slot, or conjunction with other spells in order to add a control component that was not there before...
The basic spells are actually damage spells..... Not control spells.
IE... the CW is not a base controller.... its a damager with control components... that can be added. But that is not what it is at its base.
EDIT: You know what I think might help people to see the CW accurately... Stop using the word Control Wizard when talking about it. Call it the Wizard remove the WORD "control" in your mind... and then look the class over again... see what it ACTUALLY does at its base.....