Control Wizard casting times

crazymikee

So far I've tested every ability and frankly im far from impressed. I understand the damage reductions, debuffing reductions, feat changes, but one thing I don't understand and think is game-breaking is the changes to the casting times. Currently almost every ability has had their casting time increased, on paper it may seem like a small change. But during the heat of battle, the change is so noticable, it's almost depressing to even attack people. This was completely unnecessary and will have very large repercussions on the CW player base. None of the other classes have had such extreme changes affecting how fast then attack, giving every other class in the game a huge advantage over the CW. The attack speeds were perfect before, but now they are so slow they can glitch through eachother and null the damage. An example:

Ray of Enfeblement has a very noticable delay timer after shooting the beam at your enemy, no other encounter in the game has that kind of delay after it.

It's completely unwarranted and from my impression of about two hours of testing all the changes, it is class-breaking. CWs now have the slowest attacks behind even GFs, and it's going to be a very bad update if it makes it to the live game come module 4. Please heed the warnings of all CWs, from me and the rest who will eventually post on the forums. We can deal with all of the adjustments to our class, but we simply can't take the hair-pulling animation / attack delays which you have placed on every... single... ability... not to mention our at-will Magic Missile aswell, which is one of our best at-wills, and the most used. The attack speed should not be changed from how it is in the live game, fighting with my friends and other NPCs in ice wind pass is nail biting because I have to wait, which seems like seconds, between my encounters, it's not something anyone would benefit from and will only negatively affect the class as a whole

reiwulf

for pvp there needs to be some more work done that's true, but with many abilities they didn't change the cast time much (for others they did though) You should probably post this in the CW post from the preview shard, instead of making a new topic though.

str8slayer

Yeah it looks like they're going for some semblance of realism here with the delays between castings. How the CW casts spells is not how mages or even sorcerers work in DND, they have limited numbers of spells per day and casting times vary wildly. Only epic-level spells are suppose to allow archmages to launch spells in rapid succession (for a very short time) like every CW in the game always does and I feel like that's what the devs are trying to fix.

That being said, this game is clearly not DND and attempting to have CW's follow rules that don't really apply to anything else but them in an MMO like this is not thinking realistically.

These nerfs will definitively kill the CW class, especially this one in particular.

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str8slayer

Pff yah right, while we're at it let's go have all the CW's run through every zone collecting "spell components" or they can't use any encounters haha.

But yes, you've made your obvious point, this is an MMO, not PNP and I have a feeling they'll be reconsidering this one... (and the unstoppable "fix" I hope")

ianthewizard2012

str8slayer wrote: »

Pff yah right, while we're at it let's go have all the CW's run through every zone collecting "spell components" or they can't use any encounters haha.

But yes, you've made your obvious point, this is an MMO, not PNP and I have a feeling they'll be reconsidering this one... (and the unstoppable "fix" I hope")

Casting spells doesn't need components in 4e, as far as I know.

frishter

Other classes already had shorter casting times, which is kind of ironic since we're meant to be the ones about control.

str8slayer

ianthewizard2012 wrote: »

Casting spells doesn't need components in 4e, as far as I know.

Well, wuddya know, now you don't have to be rich to be a powerful wizard, huzzah!

All kidding aside, this nerf alone would screw CW's for anything PVP...

midnightfang93

str8slayer wrote: »

Well, wuddya know, now you don't have to be rich to be a powerful wizard, huzzah!

All kidding aside, this nerf alone would screw CW's for anything PVP...

CW's are anything but screwed for PvP atm...

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kozi001

Not to mention CW extremely suffers about laggy environment because of their long casting time.
With GWF I can be ok with lags because of the very short casting time.

With CW only icy terrain/sudden storm can be casted fast and safely.
Casting laggy shard/steal time/coi is very annoying because of the failed and multiple animations...

adernath

Increasing of casting times is an incredible horrible idea for pvp (and pve of course without dps compensation) when you have already low mobility and low armor and no defenses (apart from a mediocre shield).

Just because there is 1 out of 5 CWs who learned his class well enough to dominate in AOE trashing we will now receive a large nerf... really great

If I can not play a DPS Caster which can do comparable damage to other DPS classes, especially GWFs then I stop playing!

atarcan

The only reason I can think of for increased casting times is dev's intend to alter weapon enchant effects based on casting time. There are locked or not disclosed changes and I believe this is one of them. They will probably buff the overlooked weapon enchants based on casting time of skills. (Mentioned by gentelmancrush but I can't recall in which thread)

I fear however this will result in <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> vorpal AND having clumsy/bugged animations and spells easily disrupted by mobs in PVE...

knoebels

I've been playing CW for about 2 months and while the damage it does seems ridiculously high (compared to my main which is GF), having slower casting times is going to make CW horrible to play. Just nerf the damage and maybe a few CD's (like sudden storm).

Or nerf the High Vizier which is BiS, like you nerfed all the BiS GF gear.

mircalla83

knoebels wrote: »

I've been playing CW for about 2 months and while the damage it does seems ridiculously high (compared to my main which is GF), having slower casting times is going to make CW horrible to play. Just nerf the damage and maybe a few CD's (like sudden storm).

Or nerf the High Vizier which is BiS, like you nerfed all the BiS GF gear.

It might be that HV is no longer BiS, given the fact that CWs need to provide Crit Rating now, instead of relying on the over the top procrate of EotS to replace a whole Stat with a Class Feature. When in an AoE situation, a Power more or less results in what can be translated as 80% Crit chance (on average), something is not right. Especially when this percentage is aquired without actually bringing any crit rating in the first place.

crazymikee

Thaumaturge gear may still be king without eye of the storm :P

katamaster81899

Yeah, I was testing some of my encounters by doing heroic encounters in the icewind pass, and I was barely able to get a single spell off before being knocked back, stunned, or forced to dodge out of the way. These casting time changes have made my CW UNPLAYABLE as of right now....

I'm begging you cryptic. You can leave the damage reductions and whatnot. But, please fix the casting times, because that has killed the class now.

v1rus89

One of the best things in this game was the smooth combact system, after this nerf i feel like things are so mechanic and slow it's really annoying.

rayrdan

v1rus89 wrote: »

One of the best things in this game was the smooth combact system, after this nerf i feel like things are so mechanic and slow it's really annoying.

*skip all to read virus post*
if he says so something has to be done.

relativity

Can "dynamic" and "action" mmorpg stomach such an abomination?

Longer casting time does not help CWs in PvP. CWs usually suffer all but 1v1 situations during PvP, so happy-clappy freezing one player from opposite team without any interferences won't happen often. So if you took damage even from skills that had not done much of it (maybe with an exception of shard), possibly faster cd and faster casting time could compensate.

ahsher

CW's get huge AOE aggro - example is PK. It's already very difficult to get singularity off while surrounded by mobs. Increasing the casting time makes it near impossible except at the beginning of battle.