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Spellstorm Renegade Guide: Death is the Best Crowd Control

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  • niadanniadan Member Posts: 1,635 Arc User
    1. For the highly geared, Prestidigitation my be better, or a wash.
    2. Spell Storm still outdamages MOF in the content as it is now.
    3. The Combat Advantage given by Steal Time is extremely short, and the other benefit of speed only wrecks havoc on the group. Plus you lose the benefit of COI on tab.

    My 2 cents worth.
  • kieranmtornkieranmtorn Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 382 Arc User
    edited December 2015
    Steal time in mastery: A good way to get allies killed that aren't used to the speed boost. Much like the havoc an ITF (GF: Into the Fray) causes when you are trying to dodge by movement (ie not burning a teleport), you over-run your destination....

    Unlike ITF (which at least boosts power for a nice duration), Steal Time is very transitory.

    Combat Advantage is easy, Nightmare Wizardy or just wait for the GF/GWF to mark everything.....
  • kieranmtornkieranmtorn Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 382 Arc User
    Now for an interesting speculation. As your critical change climbs, at what point do you de-slot Chilling Presence for something else as a Renegade. My logic: since Critical Chance > 100% is pointless, if my base chance (stats, azures, potions) > 70, I'm going to start considering it (since capstone will put us at 100%). The only viable choices look like Evocation or Arcane Presence. Any comments?...
  • romotheoneromotheone Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 729 Arc User

    Now for an interesting speculation. As your critical change climbs, at what point do you de-slot Chilling Presence for something else as a Renegade. My logic: since Critical Chance > 100% is pointless, if my base chance (stats, azures, potions) > 70, I'm going to start considering it (since capstone will put us at 100%). The only viable choices look like Evocation or Arcane Presence. Any comments?...

    You are forgetting that Chilling Presence is not just 10% crit chance, but also 48%(96% against frozen) damage increase against targets with 6 chill stacks.
  • niadanniadan Member Posts: 1,635 Arc User
    edited December 2015
    No just get rid of Uncertain Allegiance and take Abyss of Chaos. Chilling is a must. Also at that point you are adjusting stats on gear towards ALL gear has power. When using a summoned companion, you have the same issue with ARP...less so with PVP, but very much so with PVE.
  • kieranmtornkieranmtorn Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 382 Arc User

    Now for an interesting speculation. As your critical change climbs, at what point do you de-slot Chilling Presence for something else as a Renegade. My logic: since Critical Chance > 100% is pointless, if my base chance (stats, azures, potions) > 70, I'm going to start considering it (since capstone will put us at 100%). The only viable choices look like Evocation or Arcane Presence. Any comments?...

    You are forgetting that Chilling Presence is not just 10% crit chance, but also 48%(96% against frozen) damage increase against targets with 6 chill stacks.
    As you correctly remind me of the damage boost from slotting Chilling Presence. So consider the effect, of keeping Chilling Presence slotted without it being feated.

    Regardless, I've got to do some testing with ACT on preview over the holidays (after I get my the weapons finished for both my main toons).
  • vincentr6669vincentr6669 Member Posts: 235 Arc User
    All of you thanks for the answers! Now let's go to more questions:
    boom782 said:

    3.) Most well-geared CW's have 80% and as much as 100% crit chance and it usually takes just a couple seconds till I see Nightmare Wizardry pop up and then it is usually 100% uptime after that. The mastery bonus of other powers such as CoI just seem to outweigh that of Steal Time it seems to me.

    And if the crit connects 100% time, the crit itself only has a 20% to activate Combat Advantage, or are you saying that after Nightmare Wizardry pop up it will be activate the rest of the fight with no need for "hit" that 20% again?

    My last question (for now):

    Despite the guide saying that Icy Veins feat it's risky and such (has to get too close to work) that's why Spell Twisting was choosen, but isn't the (almost) instant Frozen from Icy Terrain + Icy Veins a great sinergy for slotted Chilling Presence? Basically you get that 96% bonus damage on the 1st second of fight.
  • niadanniadan Member Posts: 1,635 Arc User
    Nightmare Wizardry is up so often because we hit so fast/often. As far as icy veins vs spell twisting, chill stacks happen so fast with spell twisting that on boss fights or immune mobs, there is no better option. Trash dies quick enough.
  • ironzerg79ironzerg79 Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 4,942 Arc User
    Again, this guide was written a while ago, and while the core is still good, some of the nuances may have changed. Unfortunately it's too long for the new forum post limit, so I can't edit anything and save it, without massive amounts of work. So I won't do a 2.0 version until balance changes dictate a major re-write.

    So as far a Prestidigitation vs Learned Spell Caster, in a group with very high iLevels, Prestidigitation probably has a slight edge...but at the gear level in which it matters, nothing really does matter since content should be pretty trivial. So it's the difference of splitting hairs. The point at which it matters doesn't really matter, because there's no content in the game that comes close to challenging a group in that level of gear.

    And yes, despite the impressive nature of Swath of Destruction, I haven't met a MoF player that's come close to matching the overall damage of the SS build. And when you consider solo vs 5 man vs 10 man content, I'd rather be able to hold my own in all categories, versus just being "that guy" who brings one debuff, as good as it is.

    Nightmare Wizardry is a 12 second debuff, which gets refreshed. You should have 90%+ uptime on Nightmare Wizardry, nearly 100% on targets that take longer than a few seconds to die.

    As for Chilling Advantage, until I'm consistently parsing at or near 100% critical rates on my spells, I'm keeping it in the build. However, one option if you're getting close might be to consider 5 points in Abyss and 5 in Uncertain Allegiance and forget Chilling Advantage. In fact, if you really, really want to use Abyss of Chaos, I'd probably opt for dropping Chilling Advantage for it, and keeping the 5% crit buff for the team, versus dropping Uncertain Allegiance.

    And as for Icy Veins vs Spell Twisting...sure, you'll get a good damage boost on trash, but it's useless on bosses, which is where the real challenge is. Long gone are my days of bragging about racking up tons of damage points on trash. But when you get into the fight, the DPS gains from Spell Twisting are pretty substantial, and far outweigh the minor benefit of Icy Veins on trash.
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  • vincentr6669vincentr6669 Member Posts: 235 Arc User
    Thanks for all the info! :#

    The only thing i still disagree is about Learned versus Prestidigitation. I mean, even people with less than 3k ilvl (not much above 2k) can have around 12k power, then that 3% from Prestidigitation will turn into +400 Power which means +1% damage. Your CW lose about 1 or 2% damage for the Learned feat, but all party members with 12k more or less will have +1% damage. I guess it's preferable 5 guys +1% damage each than one guy with +2 or 3% damage. AND STILL there is all other stat ratings of ALL party to be affected by Presti while only your damage gets a little improve from learned. Look at the bigger picture.
  • thefabricantthefabricant Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 5,248 Arc User
    edited December 2015
    Whilst I do agree with you that in general @ironzerg79 at the point where min/maxing like that matters, it doesn't really matter, it would still be nice if you included that kind of min/maxing, just so that, in situations where it does matter (like when you trying to solo dungeons for example) that information is readily available. You will notice if you look over my paladin guide I try to make it cover everything. Yes, I could have just provided a list of feats and then said.."wear your weapon and armour transmutes, you playing paladin, the gear doesn't actually matter so there is no point in investing AD into anything other then your transmutes and no point in actually transmuting stuff" but I know that for some person, in some circumstance, having a more complete picture would help. Whilst it does make it rather long, when players are trying to min/max, it is a lot easier to verify someone elses work then work something out from the ground up and so I am sure that whilst it would be painful, it would be nice to see an up to date rendition of chems compendium done by you or someone else....(I am NOT going to write another document like that for a long while, so count me out :p)
  • vincentr6669vincentr6669 Member Posts: 235 Arc User
    One more question (they are coming out of nowhere :P)

    Since i'm a big fan of electricity/lightning element, i want to know if chains from Lightning Enchantments can crit, and if they can this means Lostmauth procs on chains? Or Spell Storm hits can proc on chains?

    And the CONTRARY is possible? A Spell Storm strike releasing a chain from Lightning Enchant?
  • ironzerg79ironzerg79 Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 4,942 Arc User
    @thefabricant I totally get that. But again...I literally can't edit anything in the guide to include those nuances that have developed since the guide was written and the forums switch...again. All the posts are way above the character limit, so if I go to edit them, even to REMOVE stuff, if I don't remove enough to get below the character limit, I can't save it. And we're talking thousands and thousands of characters over the limit.

    What I could probably do is just collate some of the more up to date feedback and post that in the last post where the Xbox stuff is as a sort of addendum until changes necessitate a need for version 2.0.
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  • boom782boom782 Member Posts: 183 Arc User
    I'm still confused on how to stack power vs. crit even after reading Kaelecs guide many times through. I'm sitting at 15k power and roughly 12k crit with 142% crit severity. With 3 stacks of Companions Gift I hit 22k power and 20k crit and I have a feeling my power should be way higher since I see a lot of CW's running around with 16-18k power and only 9-10k crit.

    Anyone feel like re-writing Kaelec's guide for mod 6+ or explaining it in more layman terms? :)
  • ironzerg79ironzerg79 Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 4,942 Arc User
    edited December 2015

    One more question (they are coming out of nowhere :P)

    Since i'm a big fan of electricity/lightning element, i want to know if chains from Lightning Enchantments can crit, and if they can this means Lostmauth procs on chains? Or Spell Storm hits can proc on chains?

    And the CONTRARY is possible? A Spell Storm strike releasing a chain from Lightning Enchant?

    No. Lightning procs from the enchantment can't crit, nor can they proc Lostmauth or Spell Storm.

    I'm not sure about Spell Storm procing Lightning though.

    But either way, if you're looking to just DPS, I still find Vorpal is a better option, particularly on single target fights, where Lightning is essentially useless.

    However, it does look amazing, and if you really want to stick with the Lightning theme, go for it. It's still strong enough that you'll have no problem doing the PvE content.
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  • ironzerg79ironzerg79 Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 4,942 Arc User
    boom782 said:

    I'm still confused on how to stack power vs. crit even after reading Kaelecs guide many times through. I'm sitting at 15k power and roughly 12k crit with 142% crit severity. With 3 stacks of Companions Gift I hit 22k power and 20k crit and I have a feeling my power should be way higher since I see a lot of CW's running around with 16-18k power and only 9-10k crit.

    Anyone feel like re-writing Kaelec's guide for mod 6+ or explaining it in more layman terms? :)

    Yes. Are you at 100% critical strike with 3 stacks of Companion's Gift? If so, go all power. If not, go more crit.

    Kaelec's guide is awesome for the theory, but was built on the old stat curves.

    I also know there's another tool out there that compares power vs critical strike, but it doesn't take into account extra damage that occurs when you crit (Lostmauth and Storm Spell), so I think it still undervalues critical strike.

    So that's my simple advice. Work on achieving a near 100% critical strike rate in combat.

    It's why as far as enchantments go, I'd recommend stacking Brutal Enchantments (Power/Crit) as better long-term investment, versus straight Power or Crit gems.
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  • thefabricantthefabricant Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 5,248 Arc User
    You could do what kolatmaster does, update the guide on some random page and then link the update on the OP. That would work, if you don't want to create a new thread.
  • ironzerg79ironzerg79 Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 4,942 Arc User
    Long term, we're working on getting a blogs/guides section added to the Unrepentant Website...so ultimately the entire updated guide is going to find a home there...if and when that happens, more effort will be put into updates.
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  • sangrinesangrine Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 575 Arc User


    And yes, despite the impressive nature of Swath of Destruction, I haven't met a MoF player that's come close to matching the overall damage of the SS build. And when you consider solo vs 5 man vs 10 man content, I'd rather be able to hold my own in all categories, versus just being "that guy" who brings one debuff, as good as it is.

    Mof CW can dps/debuff at max range with: Conduit Ice (tab) + Fanning Flame + Ray Enfeeble + disintegrate + furious immolation (daily). In epic-demogorgon, I can stand in sanity wells, or near sanity wells, while other CW stand near mob/boss. For solo, replace ray enfeeble with icy terrain. Applying Swath of Destruction is as simple as applying smolder. If you still use steal time, I suggest try removing it because the feeling is very liberating.
  • edited December 2015
    This content has been removed.
  • ironzerg79ironzerg79 Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 4,942 Arc User
    With Spell Twisting, you should find yourself popping encounters extremely often. I wouldn't invest anything in Recovery.
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  • smulchsmulch Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 625 Arc User

    With Spell Twisting, you should find yourself popping encounters extremely often. I wouldn't invest anything in Recovery.

    Personally, I heavily disagree with this statement. Recovery is currently the stat that scales the most out of any stat for a CW. Spell twisting is a great feat but you can get to a point where you can compensate that feat with recovery and instead grab elemental reinforcement for a 1,05^3 damage boost (around 16% dps bonus).
  • romotheoneromotheone Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 729 Arc User
    edited December 2015
    smulch said:

    With Spell Twisting, you should find yourself popping encounters extremely often. I wouldn't invest anything in Recovery.

    Personally, I heavily disagree with this statement. Recovery is currently the stat that scales the most out of any stat for a CW. Spell twisting is a great feat but you can get to a point where you can compensate that feat with recovery and instead grab elemental reinforcement for a 1,05^3 damage boost (around 16% dps bonus).
    I also don't think that Spell Twisting automatically means no Recovery. When you get to a point where the natural diminishing returns kicks in and instead of adding a little more damage, it is better to let your skills recharge faster, this then results in better DPS. Especially when your Recovery is low, each invested point in it becomes really valuable. Recovery is not a stat I would stack tho, it has a much harsher natural diminishing returns than any other offensive stat I can think of.
  • thefabricantthefabricant Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 5,248 Arc User
    With the exception of stats likeap gain and combat advantage, recovery has the worst diminishing returns. Personally, the way I feel about it is once you are at the point where your encounters are almost never on cooldown, there is no point to stack any more recovery. Furthermore, as an offensive stat, recovery is the worst as it only benefits your encounters and to a slight degree your dailies, where as other offensive stats scale everything. Yes, all offensive stats have diminishing returns when it comes to how much they increase your dps, it is just that recovery is the worst.
  • smulchsmulch Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 625 Arc User

    With the exception of stats likeap gain and combat advantage, recovery has the worst diminishing returns. Personally, the way I feel about it is once you are at the point where your encounters are almost never on cooldown, there is no point to stack any more recovery. Furthermore, as an offensive stat, recovery is the worst as it only benefits your encounters and to a slight degree your dailies, where as other offensive stats scale everything. Yes, all offensive stats have diminishing returns when it comes to how much they increase your dps, it is just that recovery is the worst.

    It's actually the opposite. It has a linear dps increase until the point where you have spells that are off cooldown at all time. In theory, having 100% recovery is a 100% damage increase for a single spell that has a cooldown (twice the number of casts during the same time period). But of course, this isn't exactly true due to having 4 encounter powers and dailies and having at-will powers. That said, since the at-will powers of CW are not exactly what you'd call powerful (let's be frank here, they suck), encounter powers will be the biggest chunk of our dps. Recovery allow that (or spell twisting). Recovery serves the same purpose as spell twisting does, but as you said, there is a point where you can have your encounters on a nearly never on cooldown status (in reality, you mean we nearly always have an encounter/daily power to cast). This can be achieved by stacking recovery or by getting spell twisting.

    I don,t know about others but for me, the only good pieces of gear are the dragonflight assault pieces (mostly power/recovery). My ArP is extremely easy to cap thanks to the loyal avenger pieces and my 3 ArP artifacts so getting the arp pieces would be a giant waste. This gives me pretty high recovery, to the point I find spell twisting to be unneeded. This in returns gives me the chance to get elemental reinforcement, which boost my damage by 15,7%. I'll have 5744 recovery from the numbers I've crunched, which is just a bit shy from 29% faster cooldown recharge (pretty much the equivalent of 1 spell twisting in a rotation). In a single target situation, I already have nearly always a spell to cast due to the short cooldown disintegrate and sudden storm. In a aoe setting, I have more time to spam at-wills but even then, if I was to switch to spell twisting, I'm pretty sure I would have quite the excess recovery and as such, I believe elemental reinforcement to provide higher dps output (in addition to providing higher daily uptime).
  • thefabricantthefabricant Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 5,248 Arc User
    edited December 2015
    smulch said:

    With the exception of stats likeap gain and combat advantage, recovery has the worst diminishing returns. Personally, the way I feel about it is once you are at the point where your encounters are almost never on cooldown, there is no point to stack any more recovery. Furthermore, as an offensive stat, recovery is the worst as it only benefits your encounters and to a slight degree your dailies, where as other offensive stats scale everything. Yes, all offensive stats have diminishing returns when it comes to how much they increase your dps, it is just that recovery is the worst.

    It's actually the opposite. It has a linear dps increase until the point where you have spells that are off cooldown at all time. In theory, having 100% recovery is a 100% damage increase for a single spell that has a cooldown (twice the number of casts during the same time period). But of course, this isn't exactly true due to having 4 encounter powers and dailies and having at-will powers. That said, since the at-will powers of CW are not exactly what you'd call powerful (let's be frank here, they suck), encounter powers will be the biggest chunk of our dps. Recovery allow that (or spell twisting). Recovery serves the same purpose as spell twisting does, but as you said, there is a point where you can have your encounters on a nearly never on cooldown status (in reality, you mean we nearly always have an encounter/daily power to cast). This can be achieved by stacking recovery or by getting spell twisting.

    I don,t know about others but for me, the only good pieces of gear are the dragonflight assault pieces (mostly power/recovery). My ArP is extremely easy to cap thanks to the loyal avenger pieces and my 3 ArP artifacts so getting the arp pieces would be a giant waste. This gives me pretty high recovery, to the point I find spell twisting to be unneeded. This in returns gives me the chance to get elemental reinforcement, which boost my damage by 15,7%. I'll have 5744 recovery from the numbers I've crunched, which is just a bit shy from 29% faster cooldown recharge (pretty much the equivalent of 1 spell twisting in a rotation). In a single target situation, I already have nearly always a spell to cast due to the short cooldown disintegrate and sudden storm. In a aoe setting, I have more time to spam at-wills but even then, if I was to switch to spell twisting, I'm pretty sure I would have quite the excess recovery and as such, I believe elemental reinforcement to provide higher dps output (in addition to providing higher daily uptime).
    Just a small pointer, the way recovery works is it is CD/(1+recharge speed increase)
    assuming your recharge speed added up to 30%, it is NOT equal to spell twisting, in fact, it takes a 42.8% recharge speed increase to equal spell twisting, which is roughly 8600 recovery, NOT 6000, which is how you assuming it compares. Spell twisting does not work the way recovery does, it subtracts from your CD CD*(1-0.1*num_spell twisting stacks) which means it is by far superior to 30% recovery.

    So, you could either invest like 6-7k more into recovery then you would normally need (since you likely to have 1-2k anyhow) or you could invest 6-7k into power and crit. The crit will make a huge difference, the power less so, but it compares favorably with elemental reinforcement.
  • brisedabriseda Member Posts: 100 Arc User
    edited December 2015
    Hey Ironzerg, I am currently in the process of mixing and matching gears to find the BEST possible combination in my scenario.

    One thing for certain is I will be using atleast 3 gears that are Dragon Flight. The other One can be any other gear. I am not sure if I want to stack recovery, but because I feel that my Crit is consistently high. I can do so. So what do you guys think I should do.

    65% crit and around 4-5k recovery
    or around 69-70% crit and 2-3k recovery.

    With my companion 1 stack of bonding gives me about 10% crit. 3 stacks 30%. You get the idea, and with the chaotic nexus im not sure if Crit is a good investment for me anymore. When I am averaging around 75% crit consistently (lowest). (Average with highs and drops) Highest goes to about 120-130%. The median is probably 80-85%.

    Thanks!
  • smulchsmulch Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 625 Arc User
    Personally, I don't think it's worth stacking crit higher than 70% before nexus. When you proc crit, or have another CW in your group that does, those stats become a waste.
  • boom782boom782 Member Posts: 183 Arc User
    You definitely spend much more time without nexus though than you do with it so I would say it balances out and with LM set and Storm Spell, having near 100% crit all the time definitely outweighs the short amount of time you may be at 120+%.
  • ironzerg79ironzerg79 Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 4,942 Arc User
    boom782 said:

    You definitely spend much more time without nexus though than you do with it so I would say it balances out and with LM set and Storm Spell, having near 100% crit all the time definitely outweighs the short amount of time you may be at 120+%.

    I agree. I would personally make it a point to achieve near 100% critical strike without Chaotic Nexus. Still works great as a team buff, but I'd push for 100%. If you're parsing your runs with ACT, I think having consistently above 90%+ critical strike on your core attacks is a good target.

    Again, I know others feel differently, but I'm a strong advocate for Spell Twisting + Power/Crit stats, versus investing otherwise in Recovery.
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