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M15: Control Wizard Class Changes

balanced#2849 balanced Member, Cryptic Developer Posts: 41 Cryptic Developer
Hey there Control Wizards,

In M15, Control Wizards will be getting a ton of various changes to core mechanics, powers, and feats. We really felt that Control Wizard had a ton of awesome interactions between powers but that they didn’t intertwine well or had conflicting gameplay elements. To address this, we have taken a look at many Class Features, mechanics, and bugs and tuned them accordingly. The main reason there are so many changes is that we didn’t want to fix Control Wizard halfway and leave them in a state where some things worked well together (and became the default build) and others were pushed to the side.

Two of the biggest bugs with feats were found in Blighting Power and Tempest Magic. Both of these feats were intended to grant 6% and 5% bonus damage (respectively) but actually granted ~19% and 33% in the situations where they were applied. This has been fixed and is a majority of the reason why Control Wizards got a flat 25% damage increase and an additional 20% increase to cold damage powers. The other reason was the nerf to Chilling Presence, which is explained further below.

Another one of the big bugs that plagued Arcane builds was that Arcane Mastery rarely did exactly what the tooltip said it did, in regards to additional bonuses on other powers. And, when it did do what the tooltip said, the numbers didn’t quite line up. Almost all of the Arcane Mastery bonuses on powers have been adjusted and Arcane Mastery itself has had changes to it.

We want Arcane Mastery to feel more meaningful, so it has had its duration reduced and its effectiveness increased so that you care about how many stacks you have active. Also, things like disintegrate now benefit greatly from Arcane Mastery. With this, we hope to see some Arcane-based builds or builds that utilize Arcane Presence with other elements.

Finally, we wanted to reduce the power of Chilling Presence so that Control Wizards had options to choose other class features. Instead of hindering Chilling Presence too hard, we decided to reduce its power by half and then bring other class features up to par.

Baseline:

  • The base damage of all control Wizard powers has been increased by ~25%
  • All Cold damage powers have had their damage increased by an additional ~20%
  • Arcane Mastery: has been slightly revamped:
    • Arcane Mastery now lasts for 8 seconds (down from 10)
    • Arcane Mastery no longer fades when combat ends
    • Arcane Mastery damage bonus increased to 4% (up from 3%)
    • Arcane Mastery no longer increases Lightning and Fire damage dealt
    • The effects that Arcane Mastery has on other powers are now accurately detailed in their tooltips
  • Chill: Stacks of chill now last for 3 seconds (up from 2.5 seconds)
  • Control Mastery: This power is now correctly displayed in the Control Wizards powers sheet. (Functionality unchanged)
  • Control Mastery: Control effects against non-player enemies are 2.5x as effective
  • Smolder / Rimefire Smolder: Fixed an issue where re-applying Rimefire smolder, particularly through Critical Conflagration, would cause the DoT timer to reset

At-wills:

  • Storm Pillar: Charge time reduced to 1.25 seconds (down from 1.5)
  • Storm Pillar: Now creates a pillar of lightning if charged for 80% of the total charge time (down from 100%)
  • Storm Pillar: Pillar of Lightning now deals ~17% less damage

Encounters:

  • Repel: The amount of AP granted by this power has been adjusted to be more in-line with other encounter powers
  • Conduit of Ice: Duration increased to 6 seconds (up from 5)
  • Conduit of Ice: Fixed an issue where the first stack of Chill was not correctly being added to the bonus damage
  • Ray of Enfeeblement: Duration increased to 8 seconds (up from 5)
  • Ray of Enfeeblement: Duration no longer increases based on Arcane Mastery stacks
  • Ray of Enfeeblement: Debuff effectiveness now increases by 1% per stack of Arcane Mastery
  • Ray of Enfeeblement: Damage dealt reduced by ~25%
  • Ray of Enfeeblement: The amount of AP granted by this power has been adjusted to be more in-line with other encounter powers
  • Disintegrate (Reworked): No longer "instantly kills" foes when they are below a weapon damage threshold
  • Disintegrate: Now deals 100% more damage to foes below 25% hit points
  • Disintegrate (New): The Damage bonus granted by Arcane Mastery stacks are twice as effective for Disintegrate
  • Disintegrate (Spell Mastery): Now deals 300% increased damage to foes below the Health Threshold
  • Disintegrate: Damage per rank reduced to 10% (down from 15%)
  • Imprisonment: Cooldown reduced to 28 seconds (down from 40)
  • Imprisonment: Now grants one stack of Arcane Mastery when used
  • Imprisonment (Spell Mastery): Now grants one additional stack of Arcane Mastery when used
  • Imprisonment (Spell Mastery): Cooldown reduced to 14 seconds (down from 20)
  • Imprisonment: The amount of AP granted by this power has been adjusted to be more in-line with other encounter powers
  • Entangling Force: Base Cooldown changed to 16 seconds at all ranks (down from 20-14 based on rank)
  • Entangling Force: Cooldown is no longer affected on each rank up
  • Entangling Force: Base Duration decreased to 1.25 seconds (down from 1.5 seconds)
  • Entangling Force: Duration is now increased by 0.25 seconds (up from maximum possible .2 seconds) per rank
  • Entangling Force: The amount of AP granted by this power has been adjusted to be more in-line with other encounter powers.
  • Entangling Force (Spell Mastery): Now correctly increases the duration of the hold
  • Entangling Force (Spell Mastery): Hold duration increased by 1 seconds (up from 0)
  • Entangling Force: Fixed an issue where this power would not deal damage to control immune enemies
  • Steal Time (Reworked): Removed a portion of the delay that occurs after the power had finished casting
  • Steal Time: This power now slows targets for the entire duration of its cast, rather than just the first half of it.
  • Steal Time: The slow now stacks 4 times (up from 3)
  • Steal Time: The slow now correctly applies one 20% slow every stack, instead of both a 20% and 30% slow.
  • Steal Time: When cancelling the power early, the cooldown is now reduced by 50%, instead of ~66%
  • Steal Time: The slow duration is now increased by 0.2 seconds for each stack of Arcane Mastery (up from 0.1 seconds)
  • Steal Time: The buff duration applied through spell mastery is now increased by 0.2 seconds for each stack of Arcane Mastery (up from 0.1 seconds)
  • Steal Time: When used with Spell Mastery the buff is now applied to allies while casting the power.
  • Steal Time: Movement speed buff decreased to 80%, down from ~92%
  • Steal Time: Fixed an issue where the Spell Mastery version of this power would deal 0 damage multiple times.
  • Steal Time: The stun that is applied now correctly scales with each rank-up.
  • Fanning the Flame: Fixed various tooltip errors
  • Fanning the Flame: Now applies Smolder to the primary target
  • Fanning the Flame: All damage dealt by this power is now increased by 10% per rank (down from 10% for the main hit and 12% for others)
  • Fanning the Flame: Gathering Flames and Spread damage increased by ~7%
  • Fanning the Flame: Fixed an issue where the DoT effect would only deal damage 3 times (instead of 4)
  • Fanning the Flame: Fixed an issue where the DoT effect timer would reset when re-applied
  • Fanning the Flame: Fixed an issue where the Action Points gained from this power were 75% of what they should have been
  • Icy Rays: Immobilization duration increased to 1.5 seconds when used on the same target (up from 1.25 seconds)
Post edited by frozenfirevr on
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Comments

  • frozenfirevrfrozenfirevr Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,475 Community Moderator
    Guess we're back to renegade builds for support then?

    Will chaos magic proc from DoTs?
    FrozenFire
  • hugienwnhugienwn Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 54 Arc User
    The way I read it, the CW paths are being redefined again to be Opp (and chill focus) for PVP, Thaum for ... spell twisting? ... and Renegade as a much more viable support role thanks to combat advantage generation + reworked capstone.

    Should be kinda cool for CWs to be a more potent support role, but I'm not totally sure that CW as a DPSer is getting much of a buff here. Unless the flat 25% buff to everything is sufficient to make Thaums keep up with other strikers -- maybe it is.

    It certainly does seem that Shatter DPS meta is being retired & repurposed as a nice PVP capstone, reducing opponent damage & rewarding lots of chill.
  • lukejones77lukejones77 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 282 Arc User
    vorphied said:


    There's a significant oversight here: Imprisonment is still in the game.

    In fact, vorphied, the whole "Control Wizard" thing is a relic of D&D 4th edition, in play at the time that NWO launched.
    Thomas Foss, Lead Designer, even stated in a recent Nova interview, that it was unfortunate that, at the time, mages had to be "Control Wizards" and couldn't just be "Wizards". Clear implication that they were forced by D&D licensing, at the time, to go with a control role.
    For the last 3 years Cryptic have been free to drop the word "Control" from "Control Wizard", but that would be a serious rework of the class, and they're more likely to put that level of effort into a new class.

    I'll happily take rework of the existing levers to make the CW a valued member of end-game parties. :)
  • lukejones77lukejones77 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 282 Arc User

    Do i read this the same as everyone else... the changes to shatter are going to make the oppressor build useless again? respecing back to thaum i spose....? i need to read this thru more than once i guess.

    and I agreee @vorphied ... imprisonment??? who uses that??? lol

    @frozenfirevr is the renegadge spec even viable?? if you are playing endgame, do those players who have thier stats already balanced need those buffs??? a little extra crit or arp when they already have what they need?

    i am honestly not sure what I feel about this.

    Let's see how it plays out. The Oppressor line was designed to be the Control path, and not the DPS path.
    I'm for for the CW class starting to look more like the intended design. This is the fresh look opportunity to have it all start making sense.
    Bring back the Thaumaturge for DPS!

  • lukejones77lukejones77 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 282 Arc User

    @lukejones77 originally the oppressor was designed to control. but then they nerfed control - do you know how many times i was kicked from a boss fight after a wipe because as an oppressor i was useful during the dungeon but not in the boss fights cause not enough dps...

    then they put the shatter cap in, and that was worth having some points in the opressor tree, to the detriment of having points in Thaum. You lose out on spell twisting and then spend a heap of time money and resourses trying to get some recovery back on your toon.

    now they are putting a new thing in the renegade tree so that you can help buff ap gain... so if you want to run in a group of pugs you will need to be a renegade to even get a look in. that part doesnt bother me, cause i dont pug, i only run with my guild, but it will make a new "meta" for other wizards who pug.

    the real question in my mind is how much this ap gain really matters when you run end game and you have people with artificers builds and stupid high buffs and recovery rates. probably wont even be a drop in the ocean - but the testers will sort that out.

    so what is the point of a wizard??? we cant control bosses, so no point being an opressor. We apparently arent meant to be classed as a dps, cause they devs nerfed and confused us enough to not make that viable. and we arent buffers, cause at end game the players already have all the arp, crit and ap gain that they need.

    i have played this class for 4 years and i love it. but i have seen it go from a good dps toon to being twisted and contorted to the point where we cant compete dps wise against other classes, and the meta excludes wizards from pug runs.

    Mind you, i want to add that i am not complaining about my wizards damage. she holds her own as much as she can and i have no trouble main dpsing the endgame dungeons, however, she could be better if the game allowed it, and the devs stopped HAMSTER it up.

    my opinions are based on my gaming experience in neverwinter, and i am not the best at numbers. I would be more than happy for someone to prove me wrong with the stats.

    Having said all of that, i will have to reserve my final judgement until i play the new content.

    I hear you. Point is, the class has been in a twisted and contorted role mess (as you say), and you have to look at this as the clean up opportunity.
    I disagree with "we apparently aren't meant to be dps". That's an abandoned "Control Wizard" 4th edition D&D thing from the time of NWO launch. D&D owners WotC dropped all that 3 years ago, and Crytpic have been free to drop it as well. It was a bad idea that didn't last (except here). You'll typically hear that from players of other DPS classes, basically lobbying. It's all part of the MMO game balance concerns. Don't be fooled - at the highest levels, anywhere else, mages are very heavy damage dealers.

    It's not clear if the damage increase is a purely compensatory change for other nerfs, or if we'll actually end up valued members of parties.
    If we're not valued members of parties at the end of this, then yeah, time to go play elsewhere. This, however, is definitely the opportunity we've waited 3 years for.

  • theycallmetomutheycallmetomu Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,861 Arc User
    Control would be spiffy, but Neverwinter never really figured out a way to make it work and honestly, control as it exists in D&D requires a turn based game anyway, which an MMO is most clearly not.

    I'm more wondering if Evocation will be worthwhile now for overland farming.
  • someonediessomeonedies Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,257 Arc User
    Icy Veins RIP.
    Rimuru?
    Dead 🔪
  • theycallmetomutheycallmetomu Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,861 Arc User

    Icy Veins RIP.

    Well, IV still has multiple procs per hit so it might have some value for Storm Spell, but other than that, yeah: Chill builds got severely nerfed it's looking like. Well, aside from the fact that all cold spells got buffed? Hmm.
  • someonediessomeonedies Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,257 Arc User

    Icy Veins RIP.

    Well, IV still has multiple procs per hit so it might have some value for Storm Spell, but other than that, yeah: Chill builds got severely nerfed it's looking like. Well, aside from the fact that all cold spells got buffed? Hmm.
    I'm hardcore Icy Terrain User, so no hope.
    Rimuru?
    Dead 🔪
  • theycallmetomutheycallmetomu Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,861 Arc User

    Icy Veins RIP.

    Well, IV still has multiple procs per hit so it might have some value for Storm Spell, but other than that, yeah: Chill builds got severely nerfed it's looking like. Well, aside from the fact that all cold spells got buffed? Hmm.
    I'm hardcore Icy Terrain User, so no hope.
    I have three loadouts: an AOE farming DPS build that uses Icy Veins, a single target build that uses Icy Veins, and a support build that also happens to have Icy Veins.

    So, Icy Veins used to be 12%/24% damage boost. Now it's 6%/12%. But CW damage was increased by 45%! But it was reduced by about the same amount! So ... uhhh... huh.

    I suppose ditching Chilling Presence and Icy Veins opens up different options now.
  • pteriaspterias Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 661 Arc User
    edited September 2018
    Um, whoa, ok, wow...

    That is a LOT to digest and it's kinda hard to see which end is up. With such a large flat damage boost, especially for cold powers, it *seems* like it'd have to be an overall boost. It was silly for Opp to be the DPS path, but unless the general damage boosts alone are enough to make us first-rate DPS, Assailant seems like it could still use some love.

    The Renegade changes are interesting. If each Chaos Magic effect can proc simultaneously at 5% chance, it would take a while to get them up, but you could potentially have all 6 of them up on average every 20 attacks. That could add up to a LOT of buffs being up a LOT of the time! Renegade would be a complete game-changer for groups up to around ~14K, and still decent beyond that. It gets even better with Trials and BHEs.

    As for 'Uncontrolled Obliteration', that totally depends on just how "randomly" (or rarely) it really triggers.
  • eregerogeregerog Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 47 Arc User
    edited September 2018

    Shard of Endless Avalanche could use some love:

    First, when cast from spell mastery, you don't gain a stack of Arcane mastery, since oftentimes, you cast the Shard away from you.

    I'd also like to see its travel speed and distance increased, to make it a more reliable "AoE CC far-range engage ability".
    This could be compensated with a longer cool down, since using this ability mid-fight is generally less desired.

    As people have stated, the trigger chance on Chaos Magic is currently a little bit underwhelming.

    Lastly, I'm not sure about the design change to Disintegrate: The spell becomes really good once a target is below 25% health. This could lead to people changing the active abilities during a boss fight (slotting Disintegrate into mastery), which i don't like the idea of. I'd rather have the ability fulfill a consistent role, which does not promote swapping abilities mid-combat.

    Generally speaking, I'm excited about the changes and happy that you take a more thorough look at the CW.
  • maxell50maxell50 Member Posts: 2 Arc User
    edited September 2018
    sorry I read everything fast early and assumed that everything was bad with this new changes I tried the preview server and was happy to see that icy terrain,conduit of ice,ray of enfeeblement, disintegrate,chill strike and repel did more dmg then currently and its good now that you even get the option to use repel as it has same amount of dmg as chill strike so it will mostly help in boss fight also keeping chilling presence and storm spell does good dmg but putting arcane presence instead of storm spell also does good dmg but still I think storm spell and chilling presence does more dmg and just something I didn't like was that ice Knife did less dmg consequently even sometimes disintegrate did more dmg many times then ice knifer also other thing was ray of frost did little less dmg compared to now but encounter does far more dmg now so its good overal but I would like to see daily powers do good dmg too and I mostly like playing SS dps so I find this changes good and also I think now thaum does little more dmg then oppressor path as I tested I felt little increase in dmg with thaum path It was way less before but now its doing good damage so overall I am happy with the changes sorry for assuming the changes in wrong way but It would have been better if ice knife and other daily power did more dmg but I like these changes its really good and I am not much of tester but I like the new changes its good.

    Maxell
    class-cw
    Post edited by maxell50 on
  • athena#9205 athena Member Posts: 575 Arc User
    read nothing on Steal time procing weapon enchant. Nor did it get fixed properly in granting a static speed buff over variable length of time as i suggested. Looks like CW STILL isn't playable for me. guess my CW will remain a salvage fodder machine... o wait.....
  • cheesey#4444 cheesey Member Posts: 54 Arc User
    edited September 2018
    Assailant needs a few changes. It would be nice if it would:
    1. Be allowed to Critically Strike - As its not a power that deals damage based on a damage like Creeping Death/SoD... it should be able to.
    2. Scale with Debuffs.
    3. Proc off At Wills/Encounters/Dailies. Other Thaum Feats have been changed to do so.
    4. Have Consistency. Have 100% chance to proc off Powers.
    5. Remove the HP Cap & adjust damage values. It should be dealing around ~20% of your damage to perform like a capstone feat. Try to avoid putting in a ICD because cooldowns make powers less desirable and wizards shouldn't be punished for getting to a point where they can spam powers a lot.

    A further increase is needed and would make up for the loss in damage from the fix to Tempest Magic, change in Arcane Stacks, rework to Chilling Presence (Loss of 24% damage from the vs Frozen Targets), rework of Shatter Strike and the nerf to Multiprocs in M13.

    Assailant is a weird power. At low levels it functions relatively well but when you get to 70, it looses its power. At low levels it deals around 10-18% of your damage. But at endgame it deals a low 3-5%.

    I think if these changes were done, people would enjoy playing CW.



    Post edited by cheesey#4444 on
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