Chem's Comprehensive Mod 5 CW Guide

chemboy613

Chem’s Comprehensive CW guide for Mod 5

Over the last two months I have produced a lot of content and studies, all of which need to be updated for Mod 5. Instead of updating all my threads individually, I am putting them into one guide, which might as well be a book. (If anyone wants to turn this into a pretty PDF, let me know so i can get you a document file). The goal is that for a new player, they should be able to start from the beginning and get all the information they will ever need to build a good CW. It should cover all the main topics and questions, provide depth and breadth and let someone decide how to build their character without having to bounce between threads. This should increase the accessibility to new players, and I know a lot of them are reading this because i get questions on live I am thinking of you guys.



Secondly, over the course of Mod 4 I have learned a lot of new things. Partially this is due to the new information i gained from testing and thinking hard about thing, but mostly from other players. I have gotten a lot of valid and interesting suggestions from experienced players in my posts. I am taking you seriously, even if i don’t always agree. You guys have given me a broader perspective and enriched my knowledge.

The second source of information have been questions new players are asking me. Chem what do you think about XYZ? Well, maybe i never considered XYZ! Now i have to think carefully about that situation to answer that question well. Maybe I have to go to test and run a different study. Maybe i have to run with someone and log it to see what’s going on. YOUR QUESTIONS ARE HELPFUL, so please keep asking them ^^. However if you are going to PM me, please wait until i am NOT in a dungeon. If i am not, I think game mail is the best option, with forum mail being second best option. I do not check forum mail often and i let it build up until i feel like answer.

Thirdly, my last guide didn’t do all it needed to do. Granted, it was very useful in many many ways, but it did not cover some of the high level topics i wanted to address. There are things that aren’t necessarily about stats and gear and rotations that really matter to this game and this forum that i didn’t discuss well. I will attempt to do them better here, but it’s difficult and i will make no promises.

That said guys, I am very, very tired of trolling. These guides take a ton of work and knowledge to put together, and i don’t deserve the trolling from it. There is a special place in hell next to Geoffery Baratheon for you trolls. I will ask the mods to send you there if i catch you.

chemboy613

CONTENTS

1 Forum Etiquette
2 Mod 5 Acknowledgements
3 Mod 4 Acknowledgements
4 Preface
5 Philosophy
6 What the Control Wizard (actually) is
7 The most valuable thing in Neverwinter is…
8 Team Effectiveness
9 Team Chemistry
10 Personal Balance
11 Choosing a Spec
12 The Spellstorm Thaumaturge
13 The Master of Flame Thaumaturge
14 The Spellstorm Renegade
15 The Master of Flame Renegade
16 What Race do I Choose?
17 Eye of the Storm and Stormspell
18 Smolder
19 Your Stats and You
20 Ability Scores
21 Heroic Feats
22 Thaumaturge Feats
23 Renegade Feats
24 Boons
25 A Note About Boons and Feats
26 Companions
27 At Wills
28 Encounters
29 Dailies
30 Features
31 Armor Sets
32 Artifact Belts
33 Artifact Cloaks
34 Weapons
35 Artifacts
36 Jewelry and Enchantments
37 Armor Enchantments
38 Weapon Enchantments
39 Master of Flame Setup
40 How Master of Flame Does Damage
41 The DoT and Kite Playstyle (MoF Thaum)
42 The Spellstorm Setup by XXXXXX
43 How Spellstorm Does Damage by XXXXXX
44 The Spellstorm Playstyle by XXXXXX
45 Fighting Dragons
46 Special Dangers
47 Individual Dungeons
48 Facing Tiamat
49 Ways of Making AD, becoming more powerful and successful
50 Investment Ways of Making AD
51 Wrapup
52 Reserved for Future Additions
53 Reserved for Future Additions
54 Reserved for Future Additions

chemboy613

1 - Forum Etiquette.



I spend far too much time on the forums, but there are things here that are great and things that are not so great.

The best part of this forum is when people stay on topic and share their ideas. We have had some wonderful discussions here where posters, replies, luckers and even the devs have benefitted greatly.from these discussions. I really enjoy these and I would love to keep doing them.

The worst part is that many times people take things too emotionally, instead of objectively. These people often make big, bold claims with little or no evidence, or possibly very biased evidence. In addition, there are far, far too many ad hominem attacks on here. Secondly people respond to these attacks far too easily, overreact, and we go down a terrible cycle of counterproductive flaming that is both unbearable to read and produces no rewards for anyone.

Let me give you examples of a good post and a bad post.

Example A:

Chem: I really prefer wisdom for spellstorm, because EotS makes sheet crit inefficent. In addition many SSs take chilling control instead of critical power, leaving them short on AP gain they could really use.

Poster: However, I prefer crit on my spellstorm. Remember there is a significant amount of time EotS is down, and critting is always important. In addition, recharge and AP gain both have diminishing returns, whereas charisma to crit doesn’t, So even though it’s not always active, it’s balanced by not suffering DR.

Chem: That’s also true. I suppose it probably depends on path and playstyle. For example, renegades make better use of crits than other paths, so renegades might want more crit than thaums, whereas oppressors probably want to stack wisdom for maximum control.

Poster: I was thinking the same thing. As a ss/renegade i rolled int/charisma so i can help my team mates with a higher uptime of nightmare wizardry.


Now in example A, I made a position which i felt very strongly about, but the poster here made a good counter argument to my position. As we considered it, we realized we both had valid points and it probably varied on playstyle and spec. In fact, talking with some excellent spell storms, i suspect this outcome is actually correct now, even though it was not my initial position.

Now let’s look at Example B

Chem: I really prefer wisdom for spellstorm, because EotS makes sheet crit inefficent. In addition many SSs take chilling control instead of critical power, leaving them short on AP gain they could really use.

Poster: You ****! I can’t believe you think this nonsense. Spellstorm is here to do max damage, not do wimpy control spells. You want to walk into mobs and blow everything up! I can’t believe people listen to you!

Chem: Actually, I think CWs are for control first and then DPS. By controling the Mobs you will be able to max team DPS

Poster: You wouldn’t understand because you play ***** MoF. MoF is slaves to their teammates with no real power. When I see a MoF in my dungeon, i kick them because i know they will do no damage. In PvP, I just nuke them in one rotation and jump on top of their corpses. You could never 1v1 me.

Chem: Seriously dude? Go solo draco, then we can talk.


I toned down my response because I don’t want to get warned or banned XD.

Now note in example B, what the poster really meant to say was “I think you should put more points into charisma instead of wisdom, because i think the damage is better than the control.”

Instead he started with a ad hominem attack, and continued into an off-topic argument that assaulted my credibility. Of course, whomever is speaking the argument does not make it true or not true. Remember, before Einstein was Einstien, he was a lowly clerk. Nikola Tesla was in med school to please his parents. Bill gates was a dropout writing code in his hotel room before he met with IBM. It is the work product that matters most, not the source.

In addition, by focusing on attacking me instead of my argument, his good and valid argument was obscured with insults. So instead of a productive post that people could understand we got some childish nonsense.

Thirdly, this exchange would likely end up in the lower depths, never to be heard of again. The net result is that the poster had a good argument to make, i had good information to learn, and therefore everyone could have learned something - except none of these happened because of an emotional ad hominem attack.

This is why staying calm, constructive, and on topic is to YOUR benefit - and everyone else’s.

I can not say how important this is. Posts like that in example B will be reported and cleansed quickly. Please do not waste our time with this nonsense.

chemboy613

2 - Acknowledgements to the Mod 5 updates.

Many people here deserve a spot, and I will likely forget many of you.

First of all, to Ezra - you are doing an incredible job as our class advocate. I really appreciate your hard work and great ideas. I think if mod 6 CW is great, you have a lot to do with it. Thank you.

Spacejew - my forum adversary ^^ - you make a lot of good points and really make me think about things. Thank you, hope we can run some ELOL soon.

Lescar - Really appreciated your input on the spellstorm companion, your testing, and your information. I can’t test everything and i don’t have as much time playing spellstorm, so i really needed this.

Nero - man, it made me so upset when you soloed draco and i wiped XD I can’t stand it when someone else can do something i can’t. Now i got that dracolich down. You inspired me to push myself. Thanks man.

Abaddon - your testing is always spot on and excellent. I trust your guides, and results, and honestly - you soloed TOS! It sounds like torture so i’m not doing it soon, but congrats man. Quite an accomplish.

Agathe Bauer - man, you make me laugh a ton and you soloed EDV. Glad to be friends with you bro. How you stay in such high spirits is impressive :-D

Kaelic - your work is excellent, and your guide on buffs and debuffs is one of the best neverwinter publications ever.

Legiters - thank you for many, many, many, many smooth ELOL runs with almost no drama. I am staying in a personal guild until i want responsibility so I have been using you for groups. I really appreciate the companionship.

Anyone who has ever made me laugh - I have a bad habit of taking everything in my life too seriously. I have to be the best, every detail is important. Gosh, i even dyed a necklace in this game once. I can be overly intense and OCD. It is your humor that makes things playable. Thank you so much

Anyone who has ever asked me questions - Yes, you have made me die and my party wipe! Several times! However, I know that i am helping people. I am glad these guides are accomplishing their goals. Your questions have made this guide better, so some credit goes to you.

Any CW i have run with that has tried new things - Yes, i once saw icy terrain on tab and it was working. Dio made me think about Ice Storm in the new content, and it’s working. Yrda made me think about the validity of the renegade path and how to build it to huge potential. I am sure there are many more i am not remembering at the moment. You guys give me new ideas and new things to test.

I always believe that through discussions, questions, and trying new things, we can all learn and grow.

chemboy613

3 - Acknowledgements to the Mod 4 Edition:

I have spent thousands of hours in Neverwinter and met many amazing people. Many of these people have helped me and contributed to me, which has lead to making of this guide. I am absolutely, positively certain i will forget many many names here. It is not personal, there are just too many:

Before anything, thank you Blizzard for crashing the D3 auction house, and further removing it. I don’t see the point of farming if i can’t get rich as well as powerful.

My OG crew from Slayer’s Vigilance, Dar, Constantine, Marek, Tasha, Six (if you see Sixsickthis in PvP - run), and the wonderful, amazing Kat Ward. You were my first crew back in the day, and we all geared up and became good together.

The wonderful people from the PI in Nikostratos, Kristine, Dany, Skype, Kronin, and many others, you ran with me and taught me CN, i learned to throw by watching you guys play. I hope you come back to the game and avoid the monsoons and floods in your country.

The OG Crew back in Legion, for staying with me patiently when I was learning CN as well. I remember wiping at draco for HOURS. Eibs, Cack, Mort (you suck, Mort), Zak, Attens, Mang, and of course, Vivian. When i formed Crescendo, you guys were our sister guild and we enjoyed many, many runs together.

To the NW Legit community - you guys are cool, relaxed, kind, and chatty, which is nice, and it’s great to know other excellent players who think this game should be about smashing skulls and not jumping through walls.

To the Cloaks - you guys are positive and relaxed (and a great beginner guild for anyone who is new), and make me laugh when I get too intense about this game.

Nano and Carla for being excellent friends and students. If you are curious about the lightning build, Carla is the person to ask about that, and if you see Nanners OG in PvP - i recommend you run.

Most importantly, to our old guild in Mod 1/Mod 2 Crescendo’s Tyranny. Anyone who has ever worn our name around their heads, you have carried it with amazing skill, honor, and integrity. I remember that roster and we had 25 excellent, amazing CWs, most of who could short man draco back when that was an accomplishment, and 10 amazing players of all other classes. I still say that if we took the 20th best CW or two, 10th best cleric, and 10th best GWF in that Mod, we would clear CN in 30 minutes, no wipes, seamless.

Not only that, you guys were a second family to me when i really needed it. You can’t imagine what that meant to me as a person.

An extra special thanks to my officers, Joo and Theo.
Theo - i hope your hotel is going well, business is booming, and your wedding was amazing.
Joo - I hope you are in good health and your father did not suffer much.

If you feel left out, don’t fault my appreciation, but rather my memory and my intolerance for typing long lists.

chemboy613

4 - Preface



This is a guide for how to build, play, and be excellent as a CW in Neverwinter. It is a PvE guide, and certainly not a PvP guide. If you want a PvP guide, you’ll have to entice one of the high-end PvP CWs to write it for you.

This thread is not, will not, and cannot be a debate of MoF vs. SS CWs. I am very tired of this argument. Normally it goes “Spellstorm wins paingiver, therefore MOAR POWER MOAR GOOD.” If you want to discuss this, start another thread, but not here.

That said, Spellstorms and Master of Flame wizards are both excellent, but they are different. Their key class mechanics and features are very different, they do damage differently, and to play well each has a different playstyle. I believe that if you tried both paths you would feel good in one and bad in the other. Personally, I have a spellstorm CW, but when I play her, I feel i am doing absolutely everything wrong.

Personally, my qualitative observation is that a Spellstorm and Master of Flame are synergistic siblings. The Spellstorm makes up for the pure burst a Master of Flame lacks, where the MoF creates the DoT and debuff that Spellstorms lack. This is a situation where one of each is better than two of both, for sure.

If you want to discuss how you do, can, or play your SS CW, there are some great guides up here. I really respect the work that Stox and Grimah and others have done. Don’t get lost in the comments. These guys have done the research, where most people on these forums simply havent. We must distinguish between what we perceive and what actually is - and these things can be quite different.

My advice - if the person offering their opinion is either anecdotal, or pure theorycrafting, or only a few runs, don’t trust them too much. We must measure the reality behind our eyes and understand the mechanics.

Fortunately, i’ve done most of that leg work for you. Before I was a great CW, I was a lawyer, and before that, a scientist, and it is my job to understand data qualitatively. While i don’t pretend to be perfect or certain, I have done my best. I will (of course) update the guide if i discover something new, if something has changed, or if through our discussion something constructive comes from one of you.

That said, if you want to flame me or troll me, you will meet the same fate as Sean Bean in… well… every movie Sean Bean is in… (I feel bad for the guy).

chemboy613

5 - Philosophy

First and foremost Neverwinter is a team game. We must never forget that we are clearing any instance worth clearing in a team. (note - if you are OP enough to solo something, you probably should be running something harder. If you can solo eLOL, i want to see the video.) The measure of how good a player is has nothing to do with the charts at the end of dungeon. There are many things that obscure the charts, specifically paingiver and field medic. Some mechanics are caused by one player and yet credit is given to another. Smolder, Tyrannical Threat, and the incoming healing bonus from Astral Shield come to mind, but i’m sure there are others.
Secondly, these do not accounts for things like buff, debuff, control, aggro management, coordination, and teamwork, all of which contribute to success. For example, a DC may do almost no damage, and maybe almost no healing, but nimbus of light, divine glow, high prophet, a perfect terror, blessing of battle, hallowed ground, and a big blue circle to protect the team, and I bet everyone loves that DC! However, that will not show up at the end of the run.
CW can also buff and debuff the group, in fact because of high target limits and four encounters, CWs are very effective debuffers. Played correctly a CW can control enough for the team to win. There was never a reason to stack CW, but rather it was to account for the fact that most players are bad and can struggle with things such as equipping enough lifesteal, getting out of red circles, and targeting the boss with their spells. However, with the right bar, skill, feats and equipment, a CW can control all the adds you need to, and also debuff the entire room. While these things are vital to a team’s success, people still point to the paingiver charts to prove their perceived value.

If you are one of those people who believes there is only one way to play a CW, and that is max DPS, no team buffs, no defense, and be a true glass cannon, i have some suggestions for you:

Roll a fury lock, follow the melty faces guide: http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?758621-The-Fury-Warlock-melty-faces-and-you . A fury warlock ACTUALLY is a pure ranged DPS class, they are excellent at ranged DPS, so follow this guide, do insane damage, be happy.

I am not sure this is the best SW guide out there, but i can’t resist. “Melty Faces and You” is one of the best names, ever. However, SWs are pure DPS engines, whereas CWs actually do much more than just DPS. This conception that CW is a pure DPS class is simply wrong

Of course, If you feel like trolling me - Heads, spikes, walls.

If you always think of your teammates first, you will eventually find that runs are much smoother, generally faster, and you will make friends and get invited back. The reason is people ask for high GS in LFG is not because its’ required, but rather they are using it as a proxy for an anti-idiot filter. The thought is 15k CW won’t have 0 lifesteal, overpull the group, yell at the cleric for heals, blame everyone else when they mess up, and die quickly at draco. I was farming CN at 11k (we were throwing then), but it is so easy to get GS now, i bet a 12k party can farm it no problem, if they are thinking about each other instead of themselves.

chemboy613

6 - What the Control Wizard (actually) is.

The Control Wizard is (shockingly, surprisingly) a controller. Your first and foremost job is to control the mobs so you and your team can be safe and DPS effectively. This is more true for Masters of Flame because we don’t have the pleasant restriction of Eye of the Storm plus Sudden Storm. This means we can fill our bar with up to four control spells and use them as we see fit, not just when our key feat procs. You’ll notice that when you don’t hold encounters or dailies, the MoF playstyle is much smoother than the SS playstyle.

Secondly, your DPS (and everything else, actually) on the floor is 0! You can’t do anything if you die! That’s why i tend to build a more balanced character between offense and defense, rather than going a pure glass cannon. Sure you can play a very squishy CW if the team is good, your computer is excellent, your connection is excellent, there is no server lag, there are no real life distractions, and of course there aren’t annoying charge attacks like rage drakes (unless you dodge them perfectly, every time), but how often does that happen? I like to be able to perform in any group, in any dungeon, at any skill level, and that requires that i have to be a bit sturdier than some of the other guides suggest. Of course, you must build a character that feels good to you, and whatever that is will depend on a lot of things that I can not know.

Thirdly, with the ability to touch all the mobs, this means that carrying a debuff weapon enchant (plaguefire or terror) will improve the effectiveness of your whole team. When you can afford them, this is certainly the best option for you.

So if you can first control, second survive, and third debuff, then you will be in a situation to do real DPS. By piling the adds up and chaining encounter effectively, you (and everyone else) can do really good DPS to the mobs. Of course, if they are scattered everywhere and people are dying, your DPS will be terrible. Don’t think about it like “I have to do max DPS so i can be squishy and not control”; think of it as “I have to control and survive so that i can do max DPS”. The result might be the same when you overgear the content drastically (lots of dead things, very fast), but it really matters how you get there say when you are 10 or 11k and you are wondering, what should i get next?

A lot of the guides here are focused on speed farming - that is doing max burst DPS to kill the trash as fast as possible, so the runs are as short as possible, so we can get as many runs in as possible. I understand that, there was a time I was running 10 CNs a day. The thought is if you do 10 CNs, and you can save 5 minutes a run, well, that’s almost an hour. I get that. If anyone is wondering, I still go fast and clear under 30 minutes, so the differences between the two builds is not much time, in reality.

That said, what i hate most of anything, is wiping, for any reason, at any time. I want to repeatedly and reliably one-shot everything, even if i take different people, or a different class composition, or a different dungeon, etc. What i hate most is seeing the monsters stand over my corpse (which should always be the other way around). This is why I don’t worry that much about clearing trash mobs - not the elites, but rather the zombies and skeletons and archers, etc. If we put a DoT on them and kite forward in the dungeon, they are all going to tick, tick, tick, die anyway. What i want to do is get you through the more challenging encounters, because if you are having trouble with trash, you probably aren’t ready for the dungeon anyway. Being great at clearing trash might save you 2-3 minutes during a run, but being great at killing the boss will save you 2-3 wipes and many hours of frustration.

This build really thrives in fights and dungeons where there are a lot of adds, particularly when some of those are quite strong. Hence, Spellplague and the Draco fight will go well for you, but it’s important to remember that CW is fundamentally an AOE class. Some zones such as Malabog’s Castle, Shores of Tuern, and Lair of Lostmauth, are not CW friendly because they have smaller pulls with more elites. I actually think this is good for the game, because people tended to overstack CW for spellplague and CN, where the money was, and classes like TR (I love TRs), GF (I also love GFs) were overlooked because a) almost no AOE and b) low DPS. I am thrilled these classes have more use now and I want the trend to continue. That said, I still do great in these areas, it is just more balanced for all classes rather than CW domination. However, these are high-level, relatively elite zones and we must get through the lower level things to reach them.

chemboy613

7 - The most valuable thing in Neverwinter is…

Your friends, connections, and people.

Yes.

There is no greater resources in this game than having a good network. These people aren’t only bodies to fill dungeons, they are compaions, teammates, friends when you need them, advisors when you need them. They are your greatest source of information.

This is why it “never pays to be an *******.” I can’t tell you how many posts i hear about people kicking teammates after the boss drops something valuable.

THIS MAKES NO SENSE FOR ANYONE.

First of all, the most valuable drop out there is what? we’ll say 4 million for the sake of argument, which is a significant amount of AD, no doubt. But in the process of ensuring that 4 million for yourself (which you could have won anyway), you have really pissed off four people. Those people should, and will ignore you and never run with you again. They will likely tell their guilds or their friends about you and no one will ever run with you. In addition, you have made your guild look bad, and could start some bad reputational stuff about them.

So while you have gotten your one singular oh-so-valuable item, you have in fact damage your teammates, but also damaged yourself (and since you kicked your teammates, we know who you care about). If you happen to care about your guildmates, you also damaged them. In addition, people who keep acting like ******** will eventually have no friends.

These are the people who are in LFG saying stuff like “LF 3 CW, 15K+, FOR KARRU! PM! GOGOGO!” They ask for this because they have no friends, do not know how to play as a team, and are overall unpleasant people.

So while the nice people are running all day with their friends, these ******** are desperately trying to put together a group from whomever is in LFG.

Even if you aren’t a nice person, you should always be nice and respectful to your teammates. You should always agree on fair loot rules ahead of time. While you are in a group you should do your job the best you can and help the team win, because in the long term this is how you also win.

Now something I noticed while playing:

People who inflate GS are typically bad players, not understanding mechanics
People who blame their teammates for struggles are typically the worst player in the team
People who ninja loot at the end of the dungeon are typically the worst player in the team

So in general, what is my incentive to play with these people? Absolutely none. Do not be one of these ********. Show your teammates respect, kindness and fairness, and you will not only help them, but also help yourself.

chemboy613

8 - Team effectiveness

Let me say it simply. Neverwinter is a team game.

Yup, you heard me.

Neverwinter is a team game.

Sure, we all know this, right? You are in a group with five people, when you do a dungeon right? Actually, many “teams” play like 5 individuals. Everyone wrapped in their own world, doing their own thing. Now, it’s my opinion that actually CWs are probably the worst in this dimension. Because we can handle adds easily, do huge damage, and survive pretty well, CWs can fall into the trap of doing their own thing and leaving their teammates behind.

Especially if you are all around the same gear and skill level - THIS IS NOT THE WAY TO PLAY THE GAME. Shockingly, playing a team game like a solo game is bad.

Instead of giving you some purple dinosaur reasoning of why we should love each other (and love trees, don’t forget trees are people too!), let’s make this very simple.

The way to get max performance out of any group is max buff and debuff stacking.

Yes, it is not, never has been, and never will be by maxing individual DPS. I have seen quite a few instances where teams with higher gear score and personal DPS builds struggle far more than lower gearscore teams with team builds. There are many, many situations where this has occurred to me, which was the whole inspiration of making the the dracoslaying build back in Mod 2. You know, those CWs with 10k power and perfect vorpals are all talking big and acting big, but you know what? In mod two my teams were killing draco in under two minutes. That’s actual winning.

So playing as a team is normally the most effective way to clear things.

The only time i’m in a team and I act more like an individual is when I’m carrying. My team is likely undergeared and inexperienced, has low DPS, and may or may not buff effectively. However mostly, they go far slower than we should go. My goal is to have a smooth run and help them gear up ASAP, however i think time efficiency is very important too.

Hence let me say this, at the end of the day:

TEAM EFFECTIVENESS IS THE ONLY MEASURE OF ANYTHING THAT MATTERS.

Sadly we can’t score team effectiveness. However we know that good teams will:

Work together to take down dangerous mobs
Not wipe often (if at all).
Clear the dungeon quickly.

Hence we need to think about team chemistry, team DPS, and team survivability.

Notice that while individual DPS and individual survivability is important, they aren’t the actual measure here.

Hence, the best parties (if we are min maxing) will always have two things in them:

A SM/Tact GF in Draconic/KC set
A DC in HP set

In mod 4 i would say Ac/righteous DC because i think that spec is best at buffing and debuffing, but i have not yet adjusted for Mod 5.

Notice that while these classes will (obviously) increase team survivability and often have good individual survivability, they contribute low individual DPS. So, how is it that we clear faster?

Simply put, a good DC can almost double team DPS, at least on any single target. These debuffs obviously don’t have 100% uptime, but since each buff multiplies, this means a good DC will rocket team DPS.

Just like a DC can debuff the mobs dramatically, a GF can use ITF, KV and either the KC or Draconic set to increase team damage, defense, and AP gain. I am not sure of the percentages here, but with a GF in the party i can get a second hallowed ground up before the first one expires.

Hence the DC/GF combination is more powerful than any other two classes combined.

Personally my current favorite combination for min/maxing is:

Buff/Debuff DC
Buff/Facetank GF
MoF Thaum CW w P.Terror
SS Renegade CW w GPF
Furylock is P.Vorpal.

While i never ran with this exact group, i ran with a similar group and we killed the dracolich in 70 seconds. Yes, 70 seconds. It was incredible.

However the main point is that by putting TEAM first, WE win, which means more loot, more runs, more AD for EVERYONE.

Neverwinter is a team game.

Anyone who wants to respond talking about your personal epeen DPS - i really don’t care. If that is the most important part of the game to you, you are missing the point.

chemboy613

9 - Team Chemistry



Team Chemistry is a component of team effectiveness, but one that is not often talked about and misunderstood.

Now, when I was running Crescendo’s Tyranny, we all ran CN together, many times a day. Hence, we got used to each other styles, and this meant that a Crescendo run was a Crescendo run. We always pulled to the same spots, we used similar rotations, and everyone was on the same page. In addition they all did their jobs - HR would sit back and DPS and come in to unload a rotation, CW would control and place the mobs well, TR would stack wicked reminder, GF would buff team and facetank the big mobs, DC would buff, debuff and keep team alive, and most importantly GWF would hit things with big sword. Rawr.

However our coordination was great and consistent. This meant that even if someone was at a lower gear score or didn’t have great enchants they would perform far about their level because of outstanding team synergy.

What we had there was the advantage of hundreds of runs with the same group of players. Now granted, this is not ordinary. Most guilds do not have that level of activity or tightness we had, however there are things that really help up the chemistry. This is team awareness.

After watching a player for a while you will get used to their playstyle. For instance, I have a very aggressive playstyle. I like big pulls and kiting and blowing everything up at once. Some people like to go group by group. Some people are followers and like being behind people. I am not saying there is one best playstyle, jsut that you have one, so do others, and you should be aware.

Now we learn our players by watching them. For instance while casting steal time, or kiting, or going through a rotation, i am watching my teammates and seeing how they behave. You should always be seeing how your team is behaving.

This means if they behave one way, you should respond. For instance, it is part of the DC’s job to place astra shield where the team should be fighting - not necessarily where the team is. It is your job as a CW to be aware of where that shield is and go find it. What is crazy is to be one step away from the buff and not step into it, or to run away from your DC, etc XD. That is bad team chemistry!

As a CW, if there are multiple CWs and you use sing or furious immolation, you have to watch it, which means that you could chain your rotation or blow your daily in one spot. Likewise, if you are in a situation where oppressive force is the best choice and you push the mobs into a wall or a corner, that’s better than spreading them all out everywhere.

For instance, in CN if you are doing a big pull through a doorway, that’s a great spot to drop IT and push shard. That way all the mobs have to walk through your IT to come in the room AND you can prone them. Your teammates should respond in kind.

These are just a few examples, and of course there are many situations and teams out there where you can improve your chemistry. However, you need to have great situational awareness. Not just of mobs, but of your teammates, and respond to the situation well.

I would say, the first problem bad CWs make is a bad spec. You should not have this problem because you have my guide.

The second biggest problem is bad gear choices. Grated, there is always a time when you are farming your T2 set and getting some decent gear - that’s understandable, but you won’t make bad choices because you have my guide. This means that after a week or two of being 60 you should have decent enough gear to handle most situations.

The third biggest problem is poor situational awareness. Not using the correct spells for the situation. Running around like a headless Sean Bean… erm… chicken. Most importantly, these players are completely unaware of what their teammates are doing.

Don’t live within yourself, watch your team. Play with them. Help them. You win and you lose together.

chemboy613

10 - Personal balance.

There is balance in power and power in balance. The majority of CWs simply do not understand this whatsoever.



Now as a CW, you have two sets of balances you have to make.

Firstly, Damage vs. survivability.
Secondly, Damage vs. control.

I would say the majority of players get the first one wrong. They think that CWs are pure DPS, they can dodge everything, they can freeze everything, and if they get hit, they always have enough lifesteal.

First of all, this shows a lot of understanding in the game. In neverwinter there are diminishing returns, where almost all statistics are:

A*x^b

---

C + x^b

Where A, b, and C are constants and X is the input value. This means at low values, the increase is close to (A*x^b)/C, meaning that your stat is growing exponentially.

However, at high values, each point means less and less, and while you always get SOMETHING out of the stat it eventually becomes a large amount of points for a small return. This is diminishing returns.

Now say that for power and HP, this is linear, right? meaning your damage is”

Base * (1 + (power/16667). This means that power is linear. Hp is likewise linear.

However, the other attributes are multipliers, meaning 5% armor pen is always 5% more damage, however 500 power is not always 3% more damage. That’s because you already have power, so each point here too means less and less.

However many CWs will stack offensive stats to the sky - i.e. they will pay a very high cost for very little return, and let defensive stats stay low. This means that if they switched from an offensive stat at high cost and low return to a defensive stat at low cost for high return, they would become overall more powerful. This is why that more balanced toons will, in general, perform better because their stats are distributed more efficiently.

I have had people swear by glass cannons, but then complain about dying, so I said ok - try it my way, and they are astonished at how much better their control wizards play. Sometimes they have MORE damage because they are spending less time dodging and less time dead. In addition, since you have to get close to control well with icy terrain and steal time, you need to take some hits to control. This is why we must build balanced CWs with efficiently distributed statistics, rather than unbalanced CWs with inefficiently balanced statistics.

I will discuss things in more detail in stats section, however for more information see my neverwinter stat theory:

http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780961-Chem-s-Neverwinter-Stat-Theory

Also a sheet on diminishing returns:

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/3dqpvhuavj

chemboy613

11 - Choosing a spec.

Ideally, this is something you should do early in your development - i.e. “i want to play this kind of CW.” Your choice of spec will eventually influence your choice of gear, your choice of companions, your choice of artifacts and artifact gear.

Now, remember some pets are expensive to acquire and upgrade (the five i am using cost me somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 million AD). Some artifacts are difficult to obtain (i.e. the sigils). Some artifacts are very expensive (i.e. the book of the dead). Some artifact gear can get expensive (the artifact belts and presumably the artifact cloaks), and the cost of refining is potentially very high.

This means that while there is a time soon after you hit 60 where you could play around with your spec for a while, when you make a serious commitment to something that requires refinement, you are investing a large amount of time and resources into that piece of gear. Hence it is important to be relatively certain of your choices, as you cannot liquidate those investments.

Fortunately many choices are the same for all specs - but not all of them.

I am going to give you a short breakdown on each choice here, followed by a big explanation in the following section. Then we will get into the meat of this guide

Spellstorm Mage:

The original CW. The combination of Eye of the Storm and Storm Spell makes the Mod 5 spellstorm a master of burst damage, unloading more destruction in their first five seconds than any other spec and class. However, this is followed by a period of very limited efficacy when Eye of the Storm is on cooldown. In addition, the spellstorm spec does not include inherent team buffs, so all this damage is personal.

Master of Flame:

The Master of Flame path is all about Damage over Time and has excellent sustained damage, however it lacks burst. While the spellstorm explodes in the first six seconds, the Master of Flame is using that time to get warmed up. This makes them excellent in longer, sustained fights. In addition, the necessity of Focused Wizardry makes Masters of Flame more effective in single target fights. The Swath of Destruction class feature is a 15% team damage buff that spellstorms do not have access too.

In short, the spellstorm thinks “Ok, I am going to kill all i can in this rotation.” The master of flame thinks, “ok, i am going to prepare for a longer fight and bring home a team win.”

There is not an inherently better paragon path, but for some mechanics and calculations, Spellstorm has advantages in the paingiver calculation, creating the false impression they are superior. For a detailed breakdown on paragon paths, please see here:

http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?779431-Spellstorm-V-Master-of-Flame-Some-testing-theorycrafting-and-thoughts


The Paragon Trees:

Oppressor:

The Controller’s Control wizard, oppressor focuses on extra control, reduced cooldowns, and slightly more survivability. This tree has a buff toward Ray of Frost.

Thaumaturge:

A pure damage tree, the Thaum tree boosts your personal DPS 30% or more, creating a spectacular damage wizard. Thaumaturges tend to walk up to the mobs and start blowing things up. One of the best feats involves Chilling Cloud.

Renegade:

A tree focused on crit and combat advantage, providing excellent team buffs. This tree might be best for team effectiveness in mod 5. The emphasis on combat advantage encourages a spastic playstyle, getting to the opposite sides of the party to maximize effectiveness.

Now, this guide is not going to cover oppressor. This is because both Thaumaturge and Renegade offer huge amounts of damage benefits, say 30%, whereas the opressor tree will improve control similarly - say 30%.

Now, with two pets, any cw can get a control boost up to 40%, which is almost as good as the whole oppressor tree. Yet the two best DPS pets won’t add up to 10%.

Hence it is more efficient to go Thaum or Renegade and get control pets, than it is to go oppressor and get DPS pets.

Now, this doesn’t mean there aren’t great oppressors out there - i meet great oppressors all the time. I just haven’t studied it as deep as the other two trees.

Now is there is some pro-level oppressor out there who wants to chat with me, please find me and let’s discuss, however, i have yet to meet someone like that


Personally i think renegades have the edge in Mod 5- but its playstyle is not well suited to every player.

As for MoF vs. Spellstorm, i think they are relatively equal in personal damage output, though they do damage differently. MoF boosts team DPS more for sure, but Spellstorm can kill trash very quickly. Hence I truly think this is a personal preference.

If you are unsure, try them all out soon after you hit sixty, then make a choice early on.

chemboy613

12 - The Spellstorm Thaumaturge Control Wizard

The most burst heave and most popular CW spec is spellstorm thaum.

This playstyle is marked by massive burst damage on the initial rotation, often times starting the fight by proccing Eye of the Storm, then unloading Sudden Storm, Oppressive Force, Steal Time, and any other damaging abilities they have slotted. The combination of Eye of the Storm and Storm Spell creates a tremendous amount of damage in a short period of time, often clearing the room of everything except bosses and elites. Of all possible combinations, this creates the maximum burst damage.

The downside is twofold though. First of all, there are no team buffs or debuffs in the path, meaning that a Spellstorm Thaumaturge is focused on doing maximum damage for himself. Secondly, after eye of the storm is down the damage output is strongly reduced. This means a SS/Thaum could struggle with the remainder if for some reason the mobs did not all die within the initial burst.

chemboy613

13 - The Master of Flame Thaumaturge

This is my personal choice

The Master of Flame thaumaturge is a maximum for sustained damage, meaning that while the first few hits don’t do much, once they get ramped up a MoF/Thaum can output a huge amount of damage.

Unlike the Spellstorm Thaumaturge, this build is not about unloading everything within a few seconds, rather the goal is to simply hit as many mobs as possible as often as possible to start smolder rolling, then add chill as often as possible to keep rimfire smolder going. Thing is, once smolder is up you can almost just drop icy terrain and keep on walking, letting them die as they hopefully chase you. In addition freedom from eye of the storm lets you control better. Like

The downside is that no encounter adequately replaces sudden storm, forcing shard (which some people hate). In addition the lack of burst means that it takes a little while to ramp up the damage, forcing you to kite/pull for a few seconds. Also, not everyone really loves the optimal dot and kite style.

chemboy613

14 - The Spellstorm Renegade

The spellstorm renegade maintains the spellstorm burst, but instead of boosting just personal damage, they also boost team damage with nightmare wizardry and chaos magic. Now in mod 5, chaos magic got a huge buff and during fury, the whole team does 30% more damage - which is huge. So just like a MoF Thaum, this choice balances personal damage with team buffs.

Like all spellstorms, the spellstorm renegade has the weakness of limited effectiveness when eye of the storm is down. Not only in less buffs, but less damage. Also, the renegade playstyle leads the player to take more risks than normal, intensifying the need to dodge and take hits. Also to maximize the renegade build, specific artifacts and pets to maximize your potential, leaving less variability and customization.

chemboy613

15 - The Master of Flame Renegade

The Master of Flame renegade is a true buff CW, containing the amazing debuff of swath of destruction and and the buffs of nightmare wizardry and chaos magic. Hence, no one CW does as much for the team as a Master of flame renegade.

Now, the downside is that Master of Flames renegades have the lowest personal damage of the four options. Like all Master of Flame CWs, it tkaes a while for damage to ramp up, and like all renegades you have to jump around to maximize combat advantage.

In my opinion the biggest problem with MoF/Renegade is that without eye of the storm it might initially be difficult to get enough crit to get enough crit chance to get enough out of nightmare wizardry. However, with an artifact off hand and/or a belt with +charisma, this issue is repaired.

That said, I think any four of these paths is excellent and valid. Now i think you should pick the one that best suits your playstyle. Also remember when playing with others many of the bonuses stack with each other but do not stack multiple times, so the best choice is mix and max different CW types.

It’s my current theory that a SS/renegade and a MoF/Thaum is the best combination. Of course one CW is plenty, and any combination is effective - but in case you want to min/max...

chemboy613

16 - What Race do I Choose?

So now we know what we are doing, we are building a team oriented controller, who survives well in most situations, debuffs the mobs for the teams, then deals good damage, how do we most effectively choose a race? Personally, i tend to think this is a personal choice and all races will do well, but people often want to get the advantages they can get from a racial bonus. I’m not going to restate race info for you, but you can find them here: http://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Race

Good Options:

Human - You can get 2 int points, 3% more defense and 3% more heroic feats, which is great. Humans, in general, are good for any class.

Moon Elf - +2 int, +2 cha, 1% stamina, 1% AP gain, CC resist and white skin - a great option. Stats are good and AP gain is key.

Sun Elf - +2 int, +2 charisma, 2% AP gain, CC resist. Maybe slightly better than Moon elf, but we are splitting hairs. These guys are excellent options as well.

Tiefling - +2 int, +2 charisma, 5% more damage to weak monsters, chance to debuff the mobs - great stats great bonuses.

Dragonborn +2 int, +2 cha, more crit, more power, more incoming healing - Dragonborn are excellent at everything, and the bag space you get as a bonus is amazing...


Moderate Options:

Half Elf - 2 con, 2 charisma, 1 in, some nice bonuses - it’s not a bad option, but it’s not exactly ideal.

Halflings - Halflings, with dexterity and charisma (or constitution) are a decent option, but their bonuses are very much for PvP. This is a PvE guide.

Wood Elf - Dex/Int, 1% crit chance, 10% slow resist - Meh?

Not So Good Options:

Drow - You are Lolth’s chosen! You get +2 dex (worthless), +2 charisma (nice), a minor debuff that rarely procs and you heal faster at campfires (someone cares about this? Which dev thought this was useful?). Now if you could possibly turn into a drider and slaughter your teammates in a fit of rage at RNG, that would be cool - but alas, we are not so fortunate

Dwarf - Con/Wis bonus, resistance to knockback, Certainly a sub-optimal chocie. Are we shocked that best GF race is also bad CW race… no, not at all.

Half Orc - Str or Dex and Con, faster run speed, and 5% crit severity - while the severity is nice the rest of the bonuses are useless to us.

Menzoberranzan Renegade - Quite honestly, if you are paying 200$ for this pack, you can make yourself a fat gnome CW, ride a donkey, call yourself Sancho, and follow around a GWF with an Int of 8.

chemboy613

17 - Eye of the Storm and Stormspell

These two features are the core of the Spellstorm mage are the class features Eye of the Storm and Stormspell.

Eye of the storm gives you six second of 100% crit chance, which is amazing and does excellent damage. However, unlike master of flame whose features are always active, Eye of the storm has a 20 second cooldown, essentially leaving you with one class feature for 20 seconds. This means that the damage output during eye of the storm is outstanding, but definitely lacks when Eye of the storm is down.

Storm spell gives a 30% chance of shock on crit hits. This means that unlike the old version of storm spell, this damage is consolidated even more into eye of the storm. The damage from stormspell is substantial, up to 35% of your DPS, so it is basically impossible to unslot it for PvE.

These two features cumulate in an effect where where spellstorm damage is very consolidated during eye of the storm, during which it is outstanding, but then during the cooldown the damage is underwhelming.

Of course, a good use of eye of the storm can make a spellstorm mage incredibly effective, but it is important to make the most out of eye of the storm so the cooldown time is not strenuous.

chemboy613

18 - Smolder

Smolder is a key mechanic of the Master of Flame wizard. It’s a DoT that is applied in one of four ways:

Fanning the flame encounter (possibly feated)
Furious Immolation Daily
Scorching Burst at will
Critical Conflagration class feature.

There are some issues with options 1-3. Fanning the Flames, while a pretty powerful spell, now has a long cooldown and only hits multiple targets on tab, and like all other spells it has a cap. If you feat it, then it can spread as things slowly die, but this is somewhat useless if things die relatively quickly.

Furious Immolation is a great Daily but even if you have excellent AP gain, dailies might come about once every twenty seconds, which is not often enough. Secondly, the target cap on Furious Immolation is 8, which means Oppressive Force is better for larger pulls, so you might use oppressive more often (depending on situation and playstyle).

Scorching Burst is great for building arcane stacks, but you have to stand still and charge it, the target limit is 5, the attack rate is slow, etc… Personally i really don’t like this at will, though i know some people who love it. I find it awkward, personally, as I’d like to cast and move, not stand rooted and charge.

So this leaves Critical Conflagration as the only reliable way of applying smolder. At rank 3, it also gives 15% critical severity (which is pretty great), and since you are going to be casting AoE spells often, you will be critting often and hence almost everything will have smolder on it after one full rotation.

Another wonderful thing about Critical Conflagration is that you no longer worry about applying smolder. Smolder happens, as you play, then you can focus on control, dodging, resurrecting those glass cannon CWs who died, sometimes resurrecting those glass cannon GWFs who died, and so forth. This also means you are not locked into using certain spells in certain slots, because as situations change you will want to change your bar to match the situation. There are times when your fire spells just simply aren’t the best option.

Since we apply smolder (key class mechanic), which accounts for 20-30% of our damage (depends on the dungeon and team composition), and also has the potential of applying a good debuff (swath of destruction), critting often is very important for Master of Flame CWs.

Almost all players in Neverwinter tend to overstack crit. Some classes (TR), get too much naturally, but some is just silly. Stacking crit on a Spellstorm CW is silly - as EotS makes it inefficient. So in general I would like to limit my crit on most classes - maybe 1500 or less for a spellstorm, about 2500 for other classes. Because of the gear I run, i have more crit on my CW than i probably should, but I will adjust once i get my artifact belt (low drop rate, very expensive), but that said because crit applies smolder, I think critical strike is more important for MoF CW than other classes.

Real Crit vs. Sheet Crit - While your character sheet will give you your crit chance, your real spells and abilities do not always crit at the same rate. For example, smolder for me crits around 60%, whereas creeping frost and warped magics crit around 30%. Some things, most notably assailant and weapon enchantments, cannot crit at all. I am not so sure why this is, but after looking at logs it seems some spells are more likely to crit than others, and they are often in similar order. (Any insights would be useful here.) Hence your sheet crit is illustrative, and not absolute.

For a detailed study of real vs. sheet crit, see here:

http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?776041-Real-Crit-vs-Sheet-Crit-a-study

Smolder and rimfire smolder - Smolder first starts as a fire DoT, but if smolder is hit with a chill stack it transforms into rimfire smolder, which is more powerful than the original smolder. This DoT is also refreshed whenever a new chill stack is applied, which means that if you use cold spells effectively (icy terrain is amazing because of no target limit), this DoT will essentially never end until the mob dies. This means while you are evading attacks, kiting, pulling other groups, etc., the monsters you attacked originally have their HP ticking away.

Secondly, in logs and paingiver, rimfire smolder is credited to whomever last refreshed the DoT. This is a great synergy because a spellstorm running with a MoF receives over a 5% DPS boost just by having you in the party. So for example, if the spellstorm does 41.5 million in damage, 2.5 million of that is rimfire smolder. This is a big reason why paingiver is deceptive for MoF CWs, because you are creating a lot of damage that is not credited to you in the log, but for which you are responsible.

Thirdly, if we are going to apply smolder to as many mobs as possible, it is important for us to hit as many mobs as possible as often as possible, hence we should be using spells with high target limits. Also since we should keep our rimfire smolder refreshed, it’s important to hit things with as many chill stacks as we can. This is why Conduit on Tab is so wonderful. In addition to surprisingly good damage, as it ticks it applies chill.

To me, the only downside of the smolder mechanic is that if the mobs die too fast it doesn’t get applied fully. This is why if you are massively overgeared and running with a high-burst spellstorm, they will demolish you in paingiver because their damage is mostly within the first few seconds, while all your damage is over time. However, since I assume most of the people reading this aren’t running with their 18k + friends who all have perfect vorpals, smolder is going to work great for almost everyone.

chemboy613

19 - Your Stats and You:

For equations and a graph, see here

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/3dqpvhuavj

For an in-depth guide about neverwinter stats and debuffs, you can look here:

http://laggygamerz.com/forum/index.php?/topic/382-kaelac%E2%80%99s-guide-to-damage-tenacity-reisistance-and-debuffs-in-neverwinter/#2

I think it’s an excellent read. If you read beyond the numbers it also becomes illustrative why debuff stacking is often more useful than personal DPS stacking.

Also, very important and interesting, is crit vs. power guide:

http://laggygamerz.com/forum/index.php?/topic/342-crit-power-and-dps-the-numbers-guide/

Reading this will make it obvious that going over 3000 crit, even with a perfect vorpal, is a bit silly. That said there are times when you will be forced to take a stat you don’t want. Recently i had to take a choice between Power, Hp, Deflection, ARP and Power, Crit, Recovery, ARP. I could use Power, Recovery, HP and Armor Pen, but i was overstacked on crit. However, since deflection is probably the worst stat for CW I elected to take the crit (overstacked, severe DR) instead of the deflection (relatively useless). It’s also important that since for us, crit isn’t just more damage, it’s applying smolder, it’s not quite as awful to be overstacked on crit.

After that illustrative example, let’s discuss what each stat does.

Power: Power a damage increase for all your spells, approximately 3% more damage per every 500 power in comparison to 0 power. This is a linear relationship and hence high power ratings do not suffer the same diminishing returns as other stats. However, before diminishing returns hit, almost all the other options are better. This is why high-end players all end up power stacking because they have nothing else to put the points into. However, power stacking is something for late game growth.

Crit: Increases your chance of landing a critical strike. A key stat for MoF CWs. You will often end up getting more than you need, but personally i wouldn’t try stacking over 2500. However it turns out key gear and artifacts for us have crit on them, as do the artifact weapons and artifact belt, so you will be in surplus without trying.

Armor Pen: This is a key stat for doing damage. I would try to get it to 20%, or around 2000. You often hear people say 24%, which is true for bosses (22% for a few elites), however a) the diminishing returns are harsh so you would have to spend 400-500 points for that 4% and b) it is only effective against very few adversaries, and c) in most fights the adds are the problem. Stox and i had a long discussion about this and we are in agreement, it’s inefficient to stack over 20%

Recovery: CW gear almost all has recovery on it, so you will naturally get “enough recovery”. Enough recovery is however much you need to go through your rotation and get your dailies up as often as you need to. I tend to recommend to new players to go up to about 3500, but not over as the DR hurts too harsh afterwards. That said, with the right artifact setup you can drop recovery, but i wouldn’t recommend doing this until you have the right artifacts.

HP: HP is like Power - there are no diminishing returns on HP. Likewise, this is why endgame players stack HP because there is nothing better to put it into. If I was just starting, i wouldn’t worry too much about it, because mobs in T1 or T2 dungeons that really hurt normally have slow animations or giant red circles as warning, and hence are pretty easy to dodge. Late game however, having close to 30k is pretty normal.

Defense: People often debate whether more HP or more Defense, and I think this is a “feel” issue. I tried higher HP and lower defense on my spellstorm CW and I felt much, much squishier than having good defense and less HP on my MoF. It is my opinion to stack up to around 2000 or 2500 defense and then go for HP, but going up to 3000 is not going to get you the results you desire.

Deflection: A chance at an attack doing 50% less damage. Since CW has no base deflection and the severity is only 50%, this means that a 10% deflection rate will bail you out 10% of the time when you take half damage. However you’d have to use about 1200 points, to get that 10%, resulting in an (average) 5% reduction in damage taken, but that only benefits you 10% of the time. It costs less than 1200 points to get more than 5% defense, and raising your HP 5% is much less too, so IMO this is a terribly inefficient stat for CW. I would lower it to 0 if i could, but sometimes you have an item with two great stats and deflection and there just isn’t a better option.

Regeneration: This stat is nice for things like… saving potions between fights, but in all honesty your Lifesteal will heal you much, much more than regen, even if you have a good regen rating. Add in the fact that Regeneration has very harsh diminishing returns and it is a really not so wonderful stat for PvE.

Lifesteal: Lifesteal might be the most important socketable stat for CW, since you heal yourself while dealing damage, and you should be dealing damage all the time. By increasing your lifesteal you will dramatically increase survivability. Hence I think most players should go for at least 10% lifesteal. It doesn’t make sense to go much higher, as diminishing returns are incredibly harsh, and you could possibly run a little less if you have endless consumption.

So what’s the most important stat for CW? It’s not on this list, actually, it’s AP gain. This is because when you are in a tough situation (party is about to wipe), Oppressive Force will bail the team out, do great damage, apply your debuffs, all with no target limit! It’s truly amazing. Hence it is _very_ important to have a high AP gain. Unfortunately, there are limited ways to get this. Feats (controlling action, critical power), your wisdom stat, your recovery stat, one boon, and artifacts. This will strongly influence our best in slot artifacts, but they are either expensive or difficult to obtain. After that, i suggest the following priorities:

Lifesteal to 1000
“Enough” recovery
ARP to 2000
Defense to 2000
HP = Power.

Crit is very important, but you should be getting it on your gear, artifacts, augments, and attached to other stats without worrying much about it. However, if you choose to use the High Vizier armor set, you will need to stack crit to compensate. In this case i would stack to 2500 crit, but not go over 3000.

For a detailed study on stat theory, see here:

http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780961-Chem-s-Neverwinter-Stat-Theory

chemboy613

20 - Ability Scores

Initial Rolls are quite important for CW. Unlike some classes (for example, Con is valuable for a DC, but it is a tertiary attribute), the CW’s secondary attributes are both valuable, and the CW’s tertiary attributes are not. There are many different initial rolls and they are found here:

http://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Ability_Score_Rolling

Now, it’s important to note that unlike stats, which suffer diminishing returns, ability scores do not. Therefore these are straight up bonuses that can help you dramatically and you can push them as high as possible, which is a reason the artifact belts are both so excellent and so expensive.

It is obvious that intelligence is the main stat for a control wizard, with stright up bonuses for damage and recharge speed. Since we are an encounter based class, recharge speed is more important to us than a class that mainly uses at wills (TR comes to mind). But the other two stats are excellent as well. Wisdom gives recharge speed, AP gain, control bonus and control resist - which is pretty spectacular, while charisma gives you crit chance, companion bonus (applies to augment) and combat advantage bonus.

For Spellstorm, most CWs out there think Int/Charisma is the way to go. I have argued for Int/Wisdom - due to eye of the storm testing, but the waters are murky here. I’m on the fence personally, but my thought is if you are SS/Renegade, then go Int/Charisma roll. If you are SS/Thaum, it can be argued either way, but if you are SS/opressor, you are trying to control, not damage, so maybe Int/Wis is the way to go. I have not come to a clear resolution, as both sides have good arugments here.

For Master of Flame, we require crit to apply smolder, so it is necessary to get a Int/Charisma Roll.

When you are lower leveled, and less skilled, maybe have less of a budget or unlocks, it is very difficult to get the AP gain you need to really flourish. Remember, the ability to manage large groups of enemies is keyed upon getting oppressive force off quickly. Without it, we have to pull one or two groups at a time - which is fine for beginners - but i would pull the whole dungeon, boss to boss, if i could get away with it.

So this means the best finishing stats are 24 int, 14 wisdom, 24 charisma, which means we have to start off with 16 +2 int, 12 wisdom, and 16 +2 Charisma. This is why tieflings, dragonborns, and elves are such excellent choices for control wizards, and humans can possibly make it up with their extra feats.
But remember - our first and primary job is to be a controller, which we can’t do with a low recharge speed or low AP gain. So before you are geared well, I would put 4 points into int and four points into wisdom, THEN, once you have some artifacts to help out your AP gain, move those points back into Charisma. This is because when team DPS is low, the control is more important, but when team DPS is high and we can melt mobs down, control becomes less important, and your stats and abilities have to effect this transition as you move from early game (starting at 60, i consider leveling not really part of the game) and late game (CN speedruns, MC, VT, ESOT, ELOL).

As for the 300 zen (about 150k AD as of this writing) that you spend on a respec, in the scheme of things it is not very much. For example, refining one artifact to orange can cost upwards of 5 Million AD, and you have 3 artifact slots, an artifact weapon, and an artifact belt, so that’s a 25 million AD sink right there. Add in two perfect enchantments (another 10 million), pets (say about 7-8 million), and if we do rank 9s, (you have 24 slots), you can expect to spend up to 70 million AD to outfit your character fully. In comparison to that, 150k to adjust your spec to the right one is a footnote. It is something you could easily make in a day with leadership alts, or running dungeons (getting a little lucky, but not too much), or flipping on the AH.

A good thread full of useful ideas can be found here:

http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?567591-Trace-s-Guide-to-AD-Creation-and-Wealth-Building

But as so many threads turn into nonsensical flame wars (remember guys, heads, sicks, walls), Melody had to close it.

chemboy613

21 - Heroic Feats

CWs are in this great spot where if we had 30 points for heroic feats, we would gladly take them! Unlike many other classes, we would gladly take the extra points and use them very well. This is also one of the reasons Humans are good options for CWs - you get 3 extra feats (but would lose 2% crit chance, which might be worth it).

Controlling Action - this feat give you a 10% bonus to your AP gain bonus while controlling targets. So say your CW has +35% ap gain, that means you get a whole 3.5% ap gain while hitting a controlled target. As it is, this feat is completely worthless.

Weapon Master - 3% crit chance is too good to pass up.

Toughness - Originally i didn’t use toughness, but now i do (dropped CA). Since CA is worthless you’ll need three points here.

Fight On - This does not actually reduce cooldowns by 10% Rather it follows the form of:

A * 100

---

(100 + sum x)

Where A is a constant for the spell and X is recharge bonuses. So say you already have 35% recharge, so thats 100/135. Now with 5 points it becomes 100/145, which is NOT a 10% decrease. So this feat is less worthless than Controlling Action, but still not good.

Battlewise - if you get threat, you freeze/stun/kill. If you can’t do that, you kite. In fact, managing aggro is very productive as a CW. This is a waste

Wizards Wrath - AOE powers do 3 % more damage. Since almost everything you do is AOE - this is a great feat. 3 points here.

Blighting Power vs. Arcane Enhancement. Both are great for PvE. 3 points in each

Focused Wizardry - A must have for MoF since it increases smolder damage. Your overall damage will go up. However it’s counter productive to spellstorm so skip it.

Learned Spellcaster - This increases your damage based on your intelligence multiplier. Say you have 24 intelligence here, for a 14% damage boost. This would give you a 1.14% damage bonus per point. I say one point here for MoF and four points for SS.

Prestidigitation - Quite possibly the most overrated feat here. I know it increases your GS, but by endgame people are hard up against diminishing returns on just about everything but power, defense and HP, so when you transfer them all that crit, recovery, arp, lifesteal, etc… it doesn’t do anyone much good, nor quite honestly is it going to do you much good. (this is for MOAR GS MOAR GOOD people).



Heroic Feats for Master of Flame

Weapon Master - 3
Toughness - 3
Fight On - 1
Wizard’s Wrath - 3
Blighting Power - 3
Arcane Enhancement - 3
Learned Spellcaster - 1
Focused Wizardry - 3

Heroic Feats for Spellstorm

Weapon Master - 3
Toughness - 3
Fight On - 1
Wizard’s Wrath - 3
Blighting Power - 3
Arcane Enhancement - 3
Learned Spellcaster - 4

chemboy613

22 - Thaumaturge Feats

There are ten feats in Thaumaturge, discussed below:

Tempest Magic - Tempest magic boosts your damage to targets under 30% by 5%, resulting in a 1.5% DPS increase. There is also a rumor this is buggy with tieflings, though I have not heard of any tests recently. In my opinion this feat is good, but not great. It might be better than any T2 options.

Malevolent Surge - When you kill something (very often), you do 5% more damage. This uptime is actually very high, so this is close to a 5% DPS boost. This is the better of the T1 options

Snap Freeze - increases damage 10% against targets _without_ chill. This feat therefore, is not useful, since you will almost always have chill on everything. Therefore the uptime is very low. Relatively useless

Drifting Embers (Master of Flame) - when you damage something affected by fanning the flames, there is a chance it spreads smolder to nearby targets. While it theoretically sounds good, in reality most things die far too fast for this to be useful. Then when you are in a situation where there are enough monsters to make this feat useful, you will be using other spells anyway. Hence, this is relatively useless.

Destructive Wizardry (Spellstorm) - this is really a playstyle choice. If you use it properly, it can be very, very good and certainly better than Tempest magic. However, this means you must work Storm Pillar into your rotation like a 5th encounter. Now, if this is your playstyle, take destructive wizardry and be happy. However, if it’s not, then you might be wasting your points.

Far Spell - I hear some PvP thaumaturges use this, but in PvE you will often be getting very close to the enemies, so this is useless for PvE.

Frozen Power Transfer - This feat is incredible. In a sustained fight against a lot of mobs, you can get an almost permanent 15% damage boost. Even if you are against a single target, just work in one rotation of chilling cloud while your encounters are on cooldown. I rate this feat as excellent.

When I was spellstorm and testing destructive wizardry (this was mod 1), i found I couldn’t use FPT and DW together. It’s my opinion that FPT is the better of the two. Of course if you can use both - more power to you.

Transcendent Master - This is a nice feat, which you can take if you choose to decline bitter cold. Boosting the damage of shard is nice, but shard has been nerfed a lot so it doesn’t matter as much as we’d like it to. Icy rays is a great single target spell, useful in the new content and PvP, so that is a nice boost.

Elemental Empowerment - This feat puts a dot when you hit things with cold or arcane damage (i.e. all the time). The effects account for 15% of my DPS, so it’s an almost 20% boost? In other words, this feat is spectacular. You can’t miss it.

Assailant - this feat is changed in mod 5, now only proccing off damage. It is a nerf for PvP, but in PvE it is basically no change at all. It accounts for 10-12% of damage and is great (it’s a capstone, afterall).

Now, that isn’t all 31 points you have to spend. There are some good feats in other trees.

Bitter Cold (Oppressor) - 5% more damage to everything with cold on it is great, however it doesn’t stack with other CWs, so if you are the only CW - this is great! If you are the second CW, it’s a waste.


Chilling Control (Oppressor, Spellstorm) - this is an excellent feat that adds chill stacks to sudden storm, making it more useful in control. Overall, this is an excellent feat and 90% of spellstorms take it.

Critical Power (renegade) - this feat is outstanding and my personal favorite. See Renegade tree for more info.

Reaper’s Touch (Renegade) - Favored by my good friend Carla Valentine, but not by me. I’m putting this in here because she makes it work great.

CORE Thaumaturge feats:

Malevolent Surge
Frozen Power Transfer
Elemental Empowerment
Assailant

Now you MUST take either tempest magic or Destructive Wizardry (Spellstorm). This depends on your playstyle.

Non core feats, in order of my personal preference:

Critical Power
Bitter Cold
Chilling Control
Transcendent Master
Reaper’s Touch

Of course, your playstyle and the groups you play with are going to influence your choices here. This is why you must pick what works best for you. (I have Critical Power and Bitter Cold)

chemboy613

23 - Renegade Feats

Like thaumaturge there are 10 feats in renegade:

Critical Power - once every 20 seconds, you gain action points when you crit. Of course, with a reasonable crit chance (I would say 35%+) you crit very often, so this probably happens once every 25 seconds, at most. For me, this is 10% of my AP gain, and I have boons and artifacts that really boost my AP gain. For a lesser geared player, maybe this is 15-20% of your AP gain, which is HUGE. I think this is one of the best feats out there.

Reaper’s Touch - this feat boosts your at will damage and the procs from that at will damage. Now, at wills are under 5% of my damage (mostly used to proc FPT), so this is only a small boost. However, it’s better than the other options.

Energy Recovery - Third strike of chilling cloud gives temp HP. This feat is meaningless because almost all renegades favor magic missile, since magic missile builds arcane stacks, while chilling cloud does not. Hence this feat is useless.

Unrestrained Chaos (Spellstorm) - Maelstrom of Chaos now adds. chill. Considering I have seen maelstrom used very rarely in PvE, and only then on mobs where they are uncontrollable, this feat is useless.

Arcane Burst (Master of Flame) - Scorching burst has a chance of generating more arcane stacks. Scorching burst is a sub-par at will overall. The damage is nice, but IMO the channel slows down your movement and it’s hard to target, hence i don’t find it useful. If you love scorching burst, feel free to take this and use it, but i don’t.

Phantasmal Destruction - Increased Crit Severity while in combat advantage. A great feat overall, the damage boost is very nice.and has a decent uptime. It’s actual boost is dependent on your gear and spec

Nightmare Wizardry - Crit has a chance of giving combat advantage for the whole team. This is the most important feat in the tree, giving your team 15% bonus damage, at least. The uptime varies, but if you crit substantially, it will give you 50% or more. 7.5% team dps is huge and too good to pass up.

Masterful Arcane Theft - A feat with nice damage boost to steal time and Ray of Enfeeblement. It’s actually a nice damage boost, as Steal Time is about 10% DPS and Ray of Enfeeblement is a go to for single target fights.

Chilling Advantage - 10% more crit chance when chilling presence is slotted. This is bad for two reasons, first of all it is bugged as of this writing. Secondly, while chilling presence is getting buffed, your paragon features (Eye of the Storm, Storm Spell, Critical Conflagration, and Swath of Destruction) are all excellent, and even the buffed chilling presence may not make up for them. I have friends testing Chilling Advantage instead of Eye of the Storm, and I will update this guide when i get that data.

Chaos Magic - You get one of 3 buffs, 30% more _TEAM_ damage and lifesteal; bonus arp and crit; or bonus regen. This was buffed in Mod 5, and the 30% damage from Chaotic Fury is spectacular alone, let alone the other buffs. They are not as useful in all situations, but still are helpful. You will obviously take this.

CORE Renegade Feats:

Critical Power
Reaper’s Touch
Nightmare Wizardry
Phantasmal Destruction (maybe chilling advantage if fixed)
Chaos Magic

Supplemental Feats (order of preference)

Bitter Cold
Chilling Control (Spellstorm)
Malevolent Surge
Masterful Arcane Theft
Chilling Advantage (if fixed)
Destructive Wizardry (Spellstorm)
Tempest Magic

Note:
Some players really like Twisting Immolation feat. I don’t because when I use furious immolation, everyone blows their AOE on the mobs and they die very, very fast, rendering this feat unnecessary. However, if your teams have much lower DPS than mine, which is possible, feel free to try this feat out. However, I have no way of judging it.

chemboy613

24 - Boons.

For most of the stat boons here - I would take whatever you need more. If you are undergeared and squishy, take the defensive boons to survive longer. If you are overgeared and sturdy, might as well take the offensive boons for more damage. The truth is, I don’t play your character in your groups, so there is no way to know what is “best,” however, i have some thoughts here:

Sharandar:

Elven Haste is the way to go - that’s because AP gain is key. HP boon increases GS but is probably bad for us.

The fourth boon really doesn’t matter. Shadowtouched is so little damage and tranquility is so little healing you won’t even notice either.

The fifth boon - After some thought i have switched to Elvish resolve. This is because the little DPS from fury doesn’t outweigh the movement from resolve.

Dread Ring:

Evokers Thirst - this is just lifesteal over regen b/c PvE.

Forbidden Piercing - even if you don’t need it, Illusion Shimmer is so incredibly terrible i took Piercing on my HR with 3500 ARP >.<

Fourth boon - likewise irrelevant.

Fifth Boon - People want to take Rampaging madness, which i think is because it gives you quantifiable stats, but if you are built well the lifesteal will be too close to DR, the regen won’t matter, and the power is less than 4% DPS, even with 50 stacks.
Meanwhile Endless Consumption seems to increase your lifesteal by at least 50%, likely much more. It’s my opinion that Endless Consumption is the best boon out there and you simply can’t pass it up. Your survivability is night and day.

Icewind Dale:

Note - as of this writing i am still working on the fifth IWD boon. It takes forever (35 days), and each set of dailies is arduously long (maybe almost an hour).

I prefer combat advantage over AOE resist - both of these are very small boost (3.3%), and i doubt it matters much.

I prefer stamina gain over incoming healing - Think of it this way: Our lifesteal is already great because we took consumption and do really good damage, however, when we do die, it’s normally because of prone. Sometimes we can’t dodge because we are out of stamina, so this is a choice between lifesaver and irrelevant.

On boon 3 i would take the recovery over the 2% severity, because 2% severity is so small i wouldn’t notice it much at all (less than 1% dps). Personally i can run very low recovery, but I could see if your recovery was high, take the severity and then respec when you have better stat balance

Boon 4 - 200 damage is so amazingly irrelevant that Cold Resolve is a no brainer.

Boon 5 - I have not unlocked this yet, but i hear Winter’s Bounty is amazing. Since AP gain is vital to a CW, it seems like a no-brainer to me.

Tyranny of Dragons:

Take whatever stats you need for the first three. The fourth one is obviously lifesteal.

Boon 5 - Since incoming healing effects lifesteal, the top boon seems useless. As for the others, they all sound good. If you don’t have control pets, take the control bonus. If you die too often, take the healing. If you control and life fine, take the crit severity.

chemboy613

25 - A Note About Boons and Feats:

You’ll notice i don’t give you guys an exact “build” to follow. This is because what boons and feats are best for you is highly variable based on skill, gear, enchants, pets, team composition, dungeon, playstyle, etc… This means it is impossible for me to know what is best for you, so I would do your best job to pick what you think is best.

You’ll notice i say respect later - again this is fine. I have probably respeced my CW 15 times (paying for them too), because we have to test and figure out what builds are best for us at the current situation, and those situations really do change. We must be flexible and adapt to the situation to generate the best results.

chemboy613

26 - Companions

There are many, many good options for pets on CW, which is nice for us. I am not sure there is any “best” set of pets, and I think likely, what you would want to do at very high gear levels, is have multiple pets and switch them based upon the situation.

Augment - There are many augments out there! As for which is best, it’s hard for me to know. My guess is the chicken (two defensive slots for two eldritch stones for more stats), but chickens are insanely expensive.

Ioun Stone of Allure - The downside of the allure stone - besides the bugged bonus - is that it has an icon slot. Icon stats, unless you can get a MC/FD/Draconic I cond, are pretty lackluster in general. They give you power, crit, recovery, which you normally have plenty of. The upside is that the allure stone is (relatively) inexpensive and has power on it.

Cat - I have a cat, which i purchased back when i thought more crit and recovery were what i really needed. The crit seems unnecessary now. The main advantage of the cat is the belt slot - which is very flexible and you can just about any stats you want on her. The bonus, 200 deflect is not that important, but 50% fall damage has saved my life a few times. This is because a dragon wing flap and the hands at draco have a fall component to their damage, so while it happens rarely, it is nice.

Ioun Stone of Might - Good stats on the stone, flexible stats, and I think 5% stamina is a nice bonus - however they tend to be quite expensive to buy and upgrade. Also, no defensive slot for eldritch (but you might power stack instead).

Ioun Stone of Radiance - The Stats aren’t as good (recovery and regen), and the bonus is deflect (pointless) and lifesteal (you should have plenty, so I don’t think this is a great option. However, if you have one it is likely free for now.

Icosahedral Ioun Stone - Never seen one, incredibly rare. Good luck getting it.

Black Ice Ioun Stone - the stats are good and the slots are good, but since we are not using black ice gear, the bonus seems irrelevant to me.

Ioun Dragon Stone - good luck getting one! Seems like the allure stone but with a worse bonus. Might be good for cosmetic reasons?



Anyway, first thing to do is get an augment Pet, they are absolutely key for powering up your character and can give you close to 3000 stat points when summoned. Sure they seem expensive, and they cost AD to outfit, but in terms of AD to benefit ratio, this is very high. This should be your first big purchase.

Secondly, I like to run with control pets. This allows you to a) not stack CW, b) possibly run less recovery than you would otherwise need c) make short-manning dungeons much, much easier. If you get both, the 40% increase is quite wonderful. You could slot orb of imposition, but that would mean giving up one of our otherwise magnificent class features. They are:

Cantankerous Mage - 25% control bonus at epic
Wisp - 15% control bonus, 25% control resist.

Yes, it doesn’t increase your GS or your damage, but mobs that are frozen and stunned longer are easy to kill


A note about the Pseudodragon:

For me, now, the Pseudodragon is a great pet, especially for my playstyle it stops a lot of those moments whereby you run out of dodges and die

Stat Pets:

In general, the purpose of these pets is to simply inflate your gear score so you can “look cool” and post “21k CW LFG” and silliness like that. It might be possible that an epic sellsword is good, but in general you can find a pet with a better effect than the extra stats. People who use these to get huge GS are just silly to me.

DPS Pets -

These are a collection of pets that increase your damage through effects rather than stats. Some of them are outstanding.

Wild Hunt Rider - 5% chance to increase damage 10% for 10 seconds on encounter use
This is probably the best CW pet, period, since that chance is taken every time a mob hits and encounter. Hence steal time (many ticks) can proc it several times, as can icy terrain (no target limit) shard (15 target limit) conduit (many ticks) etc... At draco this procs for me, on average, once every ten seconds, which likely means an uptime well over 50%. It is simply marvelous and every CW should have one.

Laughing Skull - 500 Power and Recovery when you enter combat.
I don’t have one, but i have heard they are quite good. This will boost your damage at the start of combat and refreshes whenever you drop combat. If it’s your playstyle to clear group to group, this could be awesome. (Personally i only drop combat for doors, so it might not be great for me).

Dancing Blade - 5% crit severity
A budget Erinyes, this should increase your damage somewhere between 1 and 1.5%

Lightfoot Thief - Bleed effect upon crit.
I don’t have one, but would like one, as they are very expensive. That said, they used to increase DPS 4%, but it has been nerfed to 1.5%. It is certainly not worth the extremely high price

Slyblade Kobold - 5% more damage against stunned or rooted targets
If this includes “frozen” and “slowed,” as mobs become with chill, it is a worthy investment, but if it just targets who are actually stunned, then it is probably not that great (again, someone please confirm).

Blink Dog - 5% more damage in combat advantage.
It seems about 20% of damage is combat advantage - so this would be about a 1% DPS increase

Powrie - It’s on here because I hate Powries. If I could hack neverwinter, i would go in and delete all of them.

Sprite/Flaming Sprite - 2% AP gain.
This might be a nice bonus, but 2% is a bit small in comparison to some of the DPS bonuses we could get, but if you need it, go for it! I just think there are better ways to increase AP gain.

Aranea - Lightning Strikes
As far as I can tell, this is more for the fact that Aranea is rare and cool rather than Aranea is good. I saw it’s log on a SW and it was very, very underwhelming.

Galeb Duhr - the more HP you are missing, the more damage you do (up to 10%).
How good this is will depend on how much HP you have while in combat. I feel i often have a lot of HP, so I don’t use it, but if you think otherwise, feel free to get one and test it out.

Vicious Dire Wolf - 5% chance to interrupt
I don’t have this pack, but i heard it is a very good ability. Could interrupt those very obnoxious charge attacks that do so much damage.

Intellect Devourer - 5% combat advantage damage
See Blink Dog

Phase Spider - 10% combat advantage reduction
While i don’t have one, seems this bonus could save your life (someone please test).

Panther - 10% more damaged against stunned or prone targets.
See Slyblade Kobold - but twice as good. I heard this is very good as well, someone let me know if slow/chill counts for this bonus please.

Eryness - 10% crit severity
Should increase your damage somewhere around 3%. A really awesome DPS pet, I will pick one up when i have the spare AD for it.

Fire Archon - 5% more damage to monsters with HP under 30%.
A 1.5% dps increase, when that damage finishes off the mobs. Relatively inexpensive (under 1M) for an epic pet.




Notes about pets - As you can see, there are many good pets for a CW, however of the 25 or so pets listed here, you can only use one augment and four other pets at any given time. Also some of them cost real money, or are very expensive and/or difficult to obtain, so there is no way I could possible get them all, upgrade them all to epic, and then test them all. That is too much work, money and AD for me right now.

However, if someone wants to buy me a Hero of the North pack, I would gladly test the panther for you (Please!)

That said, if I was on a budget I would get any augment i like, the Wild Hunt Rider (too good to pass up), the Mage and the Wisp (for the extra control). I consider the other pets more of a luxury purchase - they are quite expensive and don’t make a huge difference. Of the ones you could buy with a reasonable amount of AD, i think the Erinyes (3500 zen plus 750,000 to upgrade to epic), is a great idea. Sure it’s expensive but remember it’s account wide and there are other things in the Shadow Warlock pack.

Since i know some people like to sport their pets, maybe you just pick your favorite one, as many of them increase DPS 1-1.5%, you should just have the ones you like.

chemboy613

27 - At Wills:

Like all paragon paths, the MoF CW has four at wills she can use. Three are common to the class and one is a paragon at will. While, maybe more so than any other class, a CW is a encounters and dailies class, you should be able to get one or two rotations of your at will powers between your encounters or dailies - of course providing you don’t have to dodge or resurrect your squishy teammates.

A great reference for CW powers and abilities is below:

http://laggygamerz.com/forum/index.php?/topic/351-damage-calculations-for-control-wizard-abilities/

This guide seems to have been done after they adjusted Magic Missile and Chilling Cloud, but before they changed assailing force to assailant. This means we need data on how your at will powers interact with the thaum capstone. If anyone has this data, i would love to see it.

Magic Missile -

This is your bread and butter D&D at will. Has the benefit of looking cool and build arcane stacks. However, it has no AoE whatsoever, so if you are fighting more than one monster (most of the time), it is suboptimal to chilling cloud. Also remember that chilling cloud will boost our power with frozen power transfer, so it becomes outdated very quickly.

However, some people love magic missile and it builds arcane stacks, so for certain builds this works well.

Ray of Frost:

Ray of frost is a single target, relatively low DPS at will, however the benefit of RoF is that it builds chill stacks very quickly and freezes monsters. This is my prefered secondary at will power.
When to use: When there is a single monster that can be frozen. Also good in PvP.



Chilling Cloud:
This is more basic than bread and butter, this is like, agriculture at will. The third strike will a) proc frozen power transfer for up to 15% more damage; b) add a stack of chill the mobs, refreshing smolder c) do damage up to five targets in the area. It’s great.
Some people don’t like chilling cloud because of the animation. My advice is to get over it.

Scorching Burst (Master of Flame):
Scorching Burst is a chargeable AOE at will that hits up to five targets, builds arcane stacks, and starts a smolder dot. While theoretically it sounds great, you do have to stand there, charge and aim.
Personally my playstyle involves a whole lot of movement, so I like abilities that i don’t have to charge and aim easily, so i don’t use this. I have always found it awkward.
That said, some people swear by it, and the arcane stacks are nice. So i would say test it out. You might prefer it to Ray of Frost.
When to use: To start smolder and arcane stacks as you engage a group, then switch back to chilling cloud.

Storm Pillar (Spellstorm):

You charge your powers up, then release forming a storm pillar, hitting multiple targets.

The damage and the AoE are quite nice, and it’s useful to work into your rotation. However, i don’t like how you have to stand and charge (notice a theme here?) Obviously if you took destructive wizardry, you need to use this effectively.

chemboy613

28 - Encounters

First of all, unlike every other class, CWs get FOUR encounters on their bar, and hence we can cast an extra spell. In terms of damage and control, your encounters will do far more than your at wills, and often times you dailies, hence CW is an encounter based class.

In addition, also unlike other classes, many CW encounters are good, and many more are good in certain situations, but not every situation. Thus during the course of a run, or run to run, we might change our bars more often than other classes. We also get the freedom to switch things up and still be effective.

Now to make things more complicated, each encounter has a mastery version, where the spell is charged to a higher power with a better effect, hence it takes a lot of knowledge and skill and experience to really understand what each and every encounter is doing. There is a lot of information here and it will take some playing time to really understand what to do.

Chill Strike-
Effect: a single target, hard hitting spell that adds a stack of chill
Mastery: it is now splash (target limit 5)
When to use: Single target fights it’s a good option. Many people level with it as it is good for soloing. However in dungeons it doesn’t really have the duration to be effective
Drawbacks: The animation is about slow, and can be hard to cancel, leading to getting smashed. Before it was impossible to cancel and i have died many times to chill strike



Entangling Force:
Effect: Chokes the target, lifting them off the ground
Mastery: Pulls mobs together (target limit 5), gains a stack of mastery per mob.
When to use: When you are fighting a small group of mobs, one of them is dangerous, and you want to increase team DPS
Notes: EF used to be put on tab as it gave you AP per mob. They fixed this sometime in module one. While the gather effect is nice for team DPS, it has no stun and a low target limit. Its usefulness is only situational.

Conduit of Ice:
Effect: Puts a icewind around the target, dealing damage over time to surrounding targets (1 primary, 5 secondary). Ticks six times.
Mastery: The AOE is larger, each tick adds chill, now can effect one primary and 6 secondary targets.
When to use: Basically all the time
Notes: Conduit on tab is marvelous, the chill adds control and refreshes smolder, and the damage is shockingly good. This spell is better than you would imagine.



Repel:
Effect: Pushes the mob back
Mastery: Now Pushes 5 mobs.
When to use: Epic Dread Vault with a low DPS party. Maybe.
Notes: We used to throw adds in spellplague, CN, and other places when our DPS was too low to kill them quickly. So you would cast a sing, lift the mobs up, and throw them with repel, which took quite some skill and timing. Crypic has now added many many invisible walls to prevent this and hence now the way to clear is to inelegantly power through. GG.

chemboy613

Shield:
Effect: Reduces first his damage by 50%, second hit damage 20%, then dissipates. You can also pop the shield to push enemies back and do damage (target limit 5).
Mastery: Now absorbs 80% damage, pushback is a little stronger
When to use: Hopefully never
Notes: A long time ago, popping shield had no target limit and generated AP per mob hit, so we could singularity, entangle, shield, something else, and what do you know, full AP again. You could effectively chain singularity without much gear.
Then Cryptic nerfed the AP gain, and so then shield was now useful for throwing (see repel) because of no target limit. Eventually Crypic nefted shield to target limit 5.
Now, shield is a “**** sign” to me, unless you are in Epic Lair of Lostmauth or Epic Shores of Turen (where the mobs hit abnormally hard). If you are using shield elsewhere it means a) your gear is bad, b) your build and stat balance are bad or c) your skills are bad. Sometimes a combination of the three. Before I got extra power points, I didn’t even put points here.

Fanning the Flame (Master of Flame):
Effect: A fire nuke spell with a DoT added. Applies Smolder.
Mastery: Now is AOE (target limit 8 I believe)
Feat: Drifting embers means that targets affected may add smolder to nearby targets when hit
When to use: Single target fights, maybe on mastery where the pulls are small.
Notes: People seem to think this spell is great, it will replace shard (which the community is down on right now), or free you from conduit on tab. Honestly, the cooldown is too long and while the damage is nice, there is no control. It’s a bit lackluster in most situations.



Sudden Storm (Spellstorm):
Effect: A chain of lightning hitting all monsters in a line
Master: The effect now chains, doing additional damage. Since this is bugged, you can buff the mobs with it (have no tested in Mod 5)
Feat: Chilling Control adds chill stacks to sudden storm, helping you control with it.
When to use: Anytime you are fighting multiple mobs
Sudden storm is an incredible spell that does great damage and also will add chill when feated. Overall, this is one of the CW’s best encounters. If you go spellstorm, this is a big reason for it.


(someone else is using sudden storm)

Icy Terrain:
Effect: Creates a patch of ice that adds chill and damages mobs that walk over it. It ticks often, lasts ten seconds or so, and has no target limit.
Mastery: You can now throw icy terrain to a target circle
When to use: I have only seen it on mastery to glitch bosses, which you should absolutely not do (go in and smash their face, please.) Even if you do pull it off it will take forever.
On your bar, it should be on there all the time. It is amazing control, it procs everything often, and it has no target limit. In addition a very short cast time means you can cast while kiting, slowing the mobs, debuffing the mobs and creating a great tick tick tick regen from lifesteal. Overall this spell is excellent. I would only take it off for single target fights.



Ray of Enfeeblement:
Effect: Increases damage to the target by 15%, also has a DoT.
Mastery: You can now cast it twice.
When to use: Single target fights. Also draco speedkills (we did this in mod 2 for fun). You can really melt him.
Notes: This spell should NEVER be on mastery. The DoT’s do not stack, and you have to wait the cool down for BOTH charges, hence you get double the debuff, but only one DoT at first, then it’s just the same as not on mastery. It’s a waste.