Control Wizard Oppressor = 50% damage of a Thaumaturge

arcofortep12 · December 2015

It is too much, half the damage of a Thaumaturge. Those buffs can't really offset the loss of damage against bosses. Against a boss it should be even less since buffs don't work.
Actually it's viable only in PVP (without killing targets), any chance on buffing it? A +50% flat DPS increase should do (for a total of 25% DPS loss compared to a Thaumaturge).

rayrdan · December 2015

Its the same for trs scoundrel, i guess control paths are bound to be bad vs bosses

niadan · December 2015

Give Oppressor bonus damage against uncontrollable mobs and tweek until the damage is more helpfull on boss fights. Leave damage against controlled mobs and players as is. My 2 cents worth.

ironzerg79 · December 2015

@acrofortep12 Indeed. The problem with the Oppressor path is that CC is completely useless against boss mobs (and most of the more dangerous mobs in a dungeon are also highly CC-resistant/Immune).

A long time ago, I suggested some changes to the Oppressor tree that amplified their CC with debuffs that became much more effective on CC-immune mobs (like bosses), but it was scattered to the wind.

Actually, quick search found it...a Christmas Miracle! Ironically enough, another thread by you

ironzerg79 said:
I agree mostly. The Oppressor tree really isn't bringing much to the table. And in fact you sacrifice a ton of damage and group buffs for a relatively small increase in your control ability. There's not much an Oppressor brings that couldn't be done by a Renegade or a Thaumaturge switching out some pets and spells. The feats themselves are pretty lackluster.

Of course, I would love to see all the trees/paragons viable for CWs. So I was thinking to myself while driving around today, "What would make the Oppressor tree compelling?"

I'm glad I asked.

The capstone is terrible. It doesn't really give the Oppressor anything useful. You can already freeze stuff, keeping it stunned...and the damage bonuses are paltry.

Rework Shatter Strike with a new mechanic called "Frostbite".

The idea here is to emulate the feeling of being stuck in a howling storm. The feeling that you're dying, slowly, and there's nothing you can do about it. Thematically, fighting an Oppressor should feel like the life is being drained out of you, your will to live is slowly extinguishing and your strength is failing. Just like dying of exposure in a winter storm, fighting an Opressor should feel like your doom is inevitable the longer the fight lasts.

To emulate that, here's what we do.

Rework Shatter Strike with a new mechanic called "Frostbite".

First part of the mechanic: Chill stacks now continue to stack on Frozen targets. The counter still 'resets' at seven stacks, which is when something freezes currently (you never see 7 stacks on chill, just 6). For every 7 stacks of Chill you inflict on a target, the target gains one stack of "Frostbite". Frostbite lasts for 10 seconds, can be refreshed by itself and has no stacking limit. Every stack of Frostbite increases the damage you take by 1% and reduces the damage the target does by 1%. So the longer the fight goes on, the more Frostbite gets stacked and the more damage the target takes, and the weaker is gets. This would make Oppressors amazingly useful on longer boss fights. At first, the effect would be hardly noticable, but after a couple minutes of chill stacking, the target is going to feel it...and will soon succumb to the power of the storm.

The other advantage to Frostbite is that creatures are continually under the chill effect. Currently, you can't stack chill on already frozen targets (you could in beta), which means there's always a window between when they unfreeze to when they get frozen again. Frostbite basically closes this window, allowing Oppressors to keep weak mobs permanently frozen, and allows for substantially higher freeze time on tougher mobs.

The third part of Frostbite is every time a control immune target gets hit with a chill stack, it takes 100% weapon damage as piercing damage. This is that creeping cold you get in a snowstorm. No matter how bundled up or protected against the cold you think you are, your body heat is slowly slipping out and you're going to succumb to the storm. The idea here is that you can't just ignore chill stacks, whether you're a boss monster or a player in PvP. They don't hurt a lot...but if you're taking a lot of chill stacks over the course of time, you need to stopping trying to shrug them off with CC immunity, or deal with the source of the storm. Otherwise, you're going to die, albiet it slowly and painfully.

The only power I would alter (to keep with the snowstorm theme) is to have Ice Storm knock targets UP (not out) then leave them prone, adding 6 stacks of chill and freezing enemies.

Those changes create a significant gap, and a unique playstyle to the Oppressor that can't be "mostly" emmulated by the other trees. It also gives them a lot of practical control and "lockdown" ability for adds, while also giving them a very powerful debuff and extra damage they can throw against control immume bosses.

ironzerg79 · December 2015

I'm sure some things would need to be tested and tweaked, but the idea was to give people who commit to the Oppressor Tree and Ice Spells a unique tree with a unique feel focusing on stacking Chills.

Beyond the usual spells, there's plenty of additional feats that add additional chill stacks on cast, and you'd need to commit to those, otherwise you may indeed have trouble maintaining stacks of Frostbite on targets. Chilling Control, Icy Veins and Glacial Movement would become more powerful effects by far because of that.

ultradd · December 2015

If oppressor gets the same damage a thaumaturage can do there isn't a single reason to run that tree though..

thefabricant · December 2015

The problem here is the beast called pvp....if you make oppressor good in pve, then people complain in pvp. of coarse, you could balance the 2 separately, but that hardly ever happens.

urabask · December 2015

thefabricant said:
The problem here is the beast called pvp....if you make oppressor good in pve, then people complain in pvp. of coarse, you could balance the 2 separately, but that hardly ever happens.

PvP is so broken that it wouldn't really make a difference : |

IMO they should just go ahead with PvE balance even if it borks PvP because PvP is never going to be fixed.

urabask · December 2015

magenubbie said:

arcofortep12 said:

ironzerg79 said:
I'm sure some things would need to be tested and tweaked, but the idea was to give people who commit to the Oppressor Tree and Ice Spells a unique tree with a unique feel focusing on stacking Chills.

Beyond the usual spells, there's plenty of additional feats that add additional chill stacks on cast, and you'd need to commit to those, otherwise you may indeed have trouble maintaining stacks of Frostbite on targets. Chilling Control, Icy Veins and Glacial Movement would become more powerful effects by far because of that.

Yes but everything gets nullified by Chills immune targets. At least they should mantain debuff from chills on bosses and the likes. This is the very least, or a flat DPS bonus.
Nothing is immune to chill stacks. Nothing. Not frost giants, not winter wolves or even Akar Kessel. You may not be able to freeze them, but most of them slow just fine (briefly) and the damage buff from chill stacks works as it does on every other mob.

Actually the phylactery in PF wipes chill stacks almost immediately after you apply them.

urabask · December 2015

magenubbie said:

urabask said:

magenubbie said:

arcofortep12 said:

ironzerg79 said:
I'm sure some things would need to be tested and tweaked, but the idea was to give people who commit to the Oppressor Tree and Ice Spells a unique tree with a unique feel focusing on stacking Chills.

Beyond the usual spells, there's plenty of additional feats that add additional chill stacks on cast, and you'd need to commit to those, otherwise you may indeed have trouble maintaining stacks of Frostbite on targets. Chilling Control, Icy Veins and Glacial Movement would become more powerful effects by far because of that.

Yes but everything gets nullified by Chills immune targets. At least they should mantain debuff from chills on bosses and the likes. This is the very least, or a flat DPS bonus.
Nothing is immune to chill stacks. Nothing. Not frost giants, not winter wolves or even Akar Kessel. You may not be able to freeze them, but most of them slow just fine (briefly) and the damage buff from chill stacks works as it does on every other mob.
Actually the phylactery in PF wipes chill stacks almost immediately after you apply them.

Never noticed. The thing dies in 3 rotations max, even to an OP. If you really require the Chilling Presence buff to kill that thing we need to have another type of discussion.

I was just saying that there are things that are immune to chill ...

ironzerg79 · December 2015

There are things that indeed drop chill stacks so fast, they might as well not even work. Obviously these cases would need to be adjusted.

ultradd#1718 said:
If oppressor gets the same damage a thaumaturage can do there isn't a single reason to run that tree though..

The changes wouldn't be direct damage boosts to the Oppressor, but more of a focus on CC and debuffing that would raise the entire groups DPS, hopefully to the level that would entice players to opt for much lower personal DPS in favor of much higher level of CC and utility against CC immune targets.

urabask · December 2015

magenubbie said:

urabask said:

magenubbie said:

urabask said:

magenubbie said:

arcofortep12 said:

ironzerg79 said:
I'm sure some things would need to be tested and tweaked, but the idea was to give people who commit to the Oppressor Tree and Ice Spells a unique tree with a unique feel focusing on stacking Chills.

Beyond the usual spells, there's plenty of additional feats that add additional chill stacks on cast, and you'd need to commit to those, otherwise you may indeed have trouble maintaining stacks of Frostbite on targets. Chilling Control, Icy Veins and Glacial Movement would become more powerful effects by far because of that.

Yes but everything gets nullified by Chills immune targets. At least they should mantain debuff from chills on bosses and the likes. This is the very least, or a flat DPS bonus.
Nothing is immune to chill stacks. Nothing. Not frost giants, not winter wolves or even Akar Kessel. You may not be able to freeze them, but most of them slow just fine (briefly) and the damage buff from chill stacks works as it does on every other mob.
Actually the phylactery in PF wipes chill stacks almost immediately after you apply them.

Never noticed. The thing dies in 3 rotations max, even to an OP. If you really require the Chilling Presence buff to kill that thing we need to have another type of discussion.
I was just saying that there are things that are immune to chill ...
Ah. But it is NOT immune. It still takes chill stacks. Resistant as it may be, that's not the same as immune. And it's not nearly immune enough to not stack 4 stacks without much trouble. See the run I just did with my baby mage:

Dude you took a screenshot in the fraction of a second that it got a chill stack after you used an ice knife. Then they dissapear. For all intents and purposes it's immune.

digolift · December 2015

Fanning the Flame is not procing Elemental Reinforcement; could it be fixed ?

Elemental Reinforcement : When you cast a Fire, Arcane, Cold or Lightning encounter power you gain 1/2/3/4/5% increased damage for 10 seconds. Each Element may apply this bonus separately.

Fanning the Flame : Fire Damage.

hustin1 · December 2015

When I'm playing my CW I usually tell the GWF's to concentrate on the boss and I'll freeze everything else. My damage output is mediocre at best, but everything else freezes -- everything.

tyrtallow · December 2015

False.

Control is about making sure mobs damage the party less. ANY CW can do this. An Oppressor takes things a step further by making it so that control actually increases party damage.
No other CW can spam Icy Terrain and Entangling Force with as much frequency as an Oppressor. My own Oppressor can spam IT/EF faster than Disintegrate with Spell Twisting atm. ALACRITY is the feat that truly makes the Oppressor path stand out.
This means:
-mobs constantly clumped together and frozen = more mobs hit by your nukes
-mobs constantly clumped together and frozen = more mobs hit by ALLIED nukes, like IBS, Dreadtheft/TT, etc.
-massive amount of weapon enchant procs from enchants with on-hit effects like PLAGUEFIRE and Lightning
-crazy AP generation thanks to encounter spam

This is on top of the various damage amplification feats the tree offers PARTY-WIDE. Hell, the MoF Oppressor is almost like a DC when it comes to stacking damage amplification mods.
The only problem I see is that Spell Twisting needs to be deeper into the Thaumaturge tree, because atm it's basically a must-have for all CWs. It also makes it so that Renegade is basically Oppressor with heals (that and because of the power creep and crit stacking). Gating Spell Twisting to Thaum makes sense because all other Thaum feats basically force a Thaum CW to use a very specific (and relatively clunky) power loadout to max out damage, and Thaum NEEDS to max out its damage if it wants to stand out among other CWs because it lacks party buffs. The other paths can get by, and worst case scenario just buff Alacrity and Chaos Magic.

All CW trees have to be unique. Thaum does personal DPS better, Oppressor specializes in control/party damage. Renegade gets both but is setup/RNG-dependent and also gets Leader-role abilities (that heal is massive and procs often). Or is supposed to be, anyway.

Control resist is close to useless in PvP, Elven Battle or otherwise.

tyrtallow · December 2015

No Alacrity? Why are you even playing Oppressor?

tyrtallow · December 2015

Let's skip the theatrics. I already gave you the reason why: you can't have everything.

Against bosses, Thaum obviously wins out because that's what the path is for. And it's not like you're not feeding the damage of 4 other people with your buffs/debuffs from feats/powers/gear. And Oppressor still has value in fights with dangerous adds.
And read about the game's power creep problem while you're at it. If you're at a point where all that matters is moar damage, then it's relevant.

"Lowering your damage even further by going Alacrity...", he says.

ultradd · December 2015

I'd rather they rework the whole feat trees tbh.. A lot of trees have the best feat right on the third nodes instead of deeper in. They are supposed to encourage making whatever build you want not "Pick a tree and make sure you get spell twisting" tree.

ultradd · December 2015

Doesn't CW class as a whole has a +ignore player resistance built in for pvp? I don't do it much but am sure someone around here mentioned it before. I should've written re-arrange the stuff in the trees not rework.

Tbh doing something about the lostmauth set. Be it nerfing it directly or buffing spells that don't work well with it, would be very welcome and add more options as whole.

Control Wizard Oppressor = 50% damage of a Thaumaturge

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