I've been playing at level 70 for a while...and boy, do I still suck!

prethen · January 2019

I'd love to get some advice on what I might be doing wrong or not doing based on what I'm experiencing.

I'm a Controller Wizard. My average equipment level is 460 (for each piece, thanks to some advice for me to start the Barovia adventure!). I have my armor at 500 because I bought that in another campaign tree (which is too hard for me to play in for now). My total level value is a bit above 7500. I have a healing companion at level 25 and another companion (I think he's a mage at level 30).

For areas like Icewind Dale, I do pretty well (although I can still get beaten if I get too bold). But, when I tried Barovia, I get my HAMSTER handed to me very easily, so I can't get too far there. I forget another campaign tree I tried starting, but the same thing happens there and I just had to give up trying for now.

I can't seem to find any way to level up my equipment. My guess is that maybe I haven't done certain campaigns that might help, but that's just a guess.

I have two big gripes though that I wish I could fix (for free, if possible). First, my movement speed without mount is appalling. I'm slower than anyone else around me (especially other PC's). With a mount, I'm still pretty much the slowest of any PC I see (I see some serious zipping around that I really envy, but I don't know how those PC's get those seriously awesome mounts or just have a great personal movement speed). I have a couple of horses but I'm now riding a wolf.

Second, I've seen lower level wizards clean house with some seriously awesome area of effect actions that I have no clue as to what they're using and it seems they can command it from encounter to encounter. I recall that recently I was doing my daily Random Queue and a 29th level wizard cleared the floor in a single action almost every time whereas I (as level 70) am sitting there killing off monsters one at a time with rays and encounter effects. What the hell am I missing out on here? For instance, the lightning action I have is not that effective since I have to delay every time by holding down the mouse button to get the maximum effect, plus it really doesn't do the serious harm that I'm seeing from other PC's.

Thanks in advance for any advice...it'll be much appreciated.

hercules125 · January 2019

1. Do your campaigns in the order listed to get your boons. There's no rush to get to the higher zones.
2. Save your seals to buy Primal Weapons and armor, that is your next set of upgrades. After that, you can think about doing hunts in Barovia for even better armor pieces.
3. Upgrade your enchants as best you can.
4. Check out mmominds.com for builds, it may give you ideas about what you're doing wrong with your build and/or rotation.

Having said all this, I personally don't play my CW much due to its squishiness. At lower ILs, they can be a pain to play IMO.

forcemajeure · January 2019

I'm not a build expert, I'm barely passably well informed. So just some basic thoughts here:

- You will need AD to advance, in some ways. So, farming AD is a goal. You should be doing your daily Random Queue, all your invokes for bonus rAD, weekly Dread Ring, Sharandar quests; whatever you can get your hands on to bring in AD.

- With the AD, or with events like the Simril event, you want to fill out your mounts stable, put some decent insignias on those mounts, and fill your Companion slots with something that has at least useful bonuses.

- A lot of the performance difference you see vs. other PCs can be from the boons they have. You can pick up boons from all the accessible campaigns (Sharandar, Dread Ring, Tyranny of Dragons, Acquisitions Inc etc)… just look at the campaign and started doing the things needed to complete boons.

- More boons can be obtained by joining a higher level guild with decent guild boons.

- You need to get a better grasp on what makes an effective CW vs. one blasting off whatever power they happen to equip. Google for CW builds and videos to get an idea what works.

- Google "Neverwinter what to do at level 70" and read some of those guides. Some info is outdated by the last couple modules (eg. salvage not being a thing anymore), but much of it is still very helpful.

jmiller84 · January 2019

A good build will definitely help in the early going, but getting those early campaign boons from ToD, DR, Shar, AI and IWD will definitely help even more. I honestly wouldn't worry too much about enchants off the bat. The R8's you got from going to Barovia will probably suffice for awhile. Eventually you'll want to transition to something like Brutals or Black Ice. This is what I tell new players who join my guild:

First, get your Bonding Runestones up to at least Rank 13. The amount of stats you can gain from them will make things that much easier.

Second, get yourself a Con Artist companion. There a few reasons for this; its extremely cheap (2 gold from companion vendor in PE), its extremely easy to gear with 3 ring slots and at LvL 30 while still Rare (blue) you obtain a great debuff power. While you may not deal a ton of damage yet, you're at least making things easier for yourself and your group by shredding enemy's defense.

Third, get yourself useful artifacts. There are many artifacts that give fairly useless stats for PvE. As a CW you're not going to need Regen, Deflect or probably Defense as stats on your Secondary artifacts. Focus on Power, Crit, Armor Pen and Recovery. Other good stats to look at are Action Point Gain and Combat Advantage.

Also as a newer player you're probably feeling squishy in tougher areas. Dark Enchants defensively for Lifesteal will help with that. In Sharandar, Dread Ring and I think Maze Engine there are boons you can get that give you a chance to heal when receiving damage. I'd suggest taking those even at endgame levels as the damage alternative doesn't proc often or deal much damage when it does.

Anyways, that's just my 2 cents. Good luck out there!

prethen · January 2019

Great advice folks! Thanks!

kvet · January 2019

#1 best piece of advice I can give? Find a good guild in a good alliance. Yes, all that other stuff about boons and whatever... but a good guild/alliance will make your game experience 100x better. Make sure it's an alliance that is willing to help new players get geared up and run content. If you're in the market (shameless plug!) consider my alliance. I'm biased towards the Cloaks, of course, but any guild in my alliance is a good choice.

Point is though, a good guild/alliance will make all the other things described above much easier and more enjoyable.

sg4mag · January 2019

You have got good advices above. And one is the most important for beginners and could be overlooked.

jmiller84 said:
Focus on Power, Crit, Armor Pen and Recovery.

Just let me change the order: Armor Penetration, Recovery, Crit, Power.
The last three can be debatable when it comes to the order but ArmPen is not. You can find this info on all good build guides, forums, etc.
Why is this so important? In short: you do not do full damage when your resistance ignored stat is below the required threshold for specific area and it is difficult to balance it with power statistic because you would need a lot of it.

So first you should focus on having 60% RI (damage resistance ignored , which comes mostly from ArmPen, some boons gives %RI directly). This should be enough for most areas, some epic dungeons (T2, maybe T3) and lvl 70+ mobs. But I'm not sure about Barovia - it may be a higher threshold.
I believe you can find some more details in forum, I am not an expert in that. Personally, until I do not do CR and other highest level dungeons I focus on having 80% RI - it is enough.

kvet · January 2019

Once you get the true End Game content (both Ravenloft zone and CR, but also Chult and TONG/Cradle) you'll want to get as close to 100% RI (arpen) as you possible can. Going a little over is OK as you do get bonus damage for reducing their damage resistance below 0. Yes, really, it's been dev confirmed -- it's why you'll sometimes see damage like 2000 (1000) rather than the normal 1000 (2000) -- that's listed as Final Damage (Raw Damage). When final is more than raw, it means among other things that they resisted in the negatives (meaning extra damage).

Anyway, that said, once you get to 100% arpen, it's much more effective from a DPS standpoint to boost Crit or Power anyway. Recovery can be very important depending on your build and class as well. As far as the actual order of priority, it's entirely dependent on your class and build since some builds naturally jack up some of those stats, or provide benefits in some way if the stats are higher, etc. For example, any class that boosts crit severity means you'll naturally gain more benefit from crit chance (the inverse is also true). Point is -you need to learn the ins and outs of your overall build (class/race/path) before you can make a choice.

HOWEVER. yes, arpen is definitely the first priority.

ragnarz2 · January 2019

kvet said:
#1 best piece of advice I can give? Find a good guild in a good alliance. Yes, all that other stuff about boons and whatever... but a good guild/alliance will make your game experience 100x better. Make sure it's an alliance that is willing to help new players get geared up and run content. If you're in the market (shame plug!) consider my alliance. I'm biased towards the Cloaks, of course, but any guild in my alliance is a good choice.

Point is though, a good guild/alliance will make all the other things described above much easier and more enjoyable.

This is the best advice you can get!

karvare · January 2019

Be sure to start Under Dark along with Dread Ring as Dread Ring requires completion of Demonic Heroic Encounters and they drop currency to advance Under Dark.

urlord283 · January 2019

"and boy, do I still suck!"

Me too

kvet · January 2019

urlord283 said:
"and boy, do I still suck!"
Me too

Compared to what? Meh. The reality is, EVERYONE sucks for a good 6 months to a year at least unless you dump thousands of dollars (no joke) into the game to buy your way to better gear. And even then, it takes months and months of consistent play to finish the campaigns and earn all the boons. Like I said above, find a good alliance that doesn't expect you to be top of the pile all the time and where you can find people in the same boat as you. Then, don't worry about it, and just have fun on the journey.

The reality is, paying tons of $$ just isn't worth it. Buying the bigger packs? Sure, maybe (maaaaabye). Buying one epic mount? yeah, probably. There's certainly some value, especially early on, in investing some $$ into a few things, but be careful of how much you spend, there is a huge diminishing return on paying real money into this game.

prethen · January 2019

Wow...the great advice keeps coming.

I'll look into the joining into a guild. My only concern there is that my play time might be a bit more constrained than many others.

I agree that Armor Penetration ended up being something I sorely needed before I was able to do any sort of damage without being pummelled to death first.

My only real complaint so far in the game is the grinding that you have to do to get through these campaigns. Like, how many times do I have to do that stupid Basement Investigation?! Argh! The Tyranny of Dragons at least is pretty open about it (and I've barely started that one since I thought it would be too much of a grind...little did I know that other campaigns wouldn't be any better) with it saying that you have to satisfy a quest 3X before moving on.

I will try to move into the Dread Ring. I think I tried out Chult too early and found out the hard way that wasn't going to fly. I didn't realize until someone pointed it out in this thread that there was truly a meaningful order to the campaign list....DOH!

plasticbat · January 2019

You should do Dread Ring and Sharandar (and may be other campaigns) concurrently because they are time gated. i.e. your progress of those campaigns is restricted per day.

kemnimtarkas · January 2019

Search the web for Neverwinter CW builds - there is some really good advice out there about how to best synergize feats, boons and powers to maximize your DPS, whether as an MoF or SS wizard. The advice also covers choices for race, companions, artifacts and enchantment types.

wintersmoke · January 2019

prethen said:
Wow...the great advice keeps coming.

I'll look into the joining into a guild. My only concern there is that my play time might be a bit more constrained than many others.

I agree that Armor Penetration ended up being something I sorely needed before I was able to do any sort of damage without being pummelled to death first.

My only real complaint so far in the game is the grinding that you have to do to get through these campaigns. Like, how many times do I have to do that stupid Basement Investigation?! Argh! The Tyranny of Dragons at least is pretty open about it (and I've barely started that one since I thought it would be too much of a grind...little did I know that other campaigns wouldn't be any better) with it saying that you have to satisfy a quest 3X before moving on.

I will try to move into the Dread Ring. I think I tried out Chult too early and found out the hard way that wasn't going to fly. I didn't realize until someone pointed it out in this thread that there was truly a meaningful order to the campaign list....DOH!

One of the Primal sets available from the seal vendor gives arpen.

juleadream · January 2019

As a CW you should not rely on single-target encounters; unless you are able to one-shot everything, it's simply a bad plan. Try this: Conduit of Ice on your Tab key, Steal Time, Icy Terrain, and, since having a hard-hitting single target spell can be useful, I add Disintegrate into the mix. Use Chilling Cloud and either Storm Pillar or Scorching Burst (whether you're SS or MoF). The idea of this rotation is to spread stacks of Chill onto as many opponents as possible, slowing and then freezing them, using Steal Time when Chill expires while the stacks build back up. The key word in the class' name is CONTROL. Mobs can't kick your backside if they are an ice cube. Choose class features and feats to give you as much control as possible (if you haven't put points into Oppressor to at least get the Icy Veins feat, I'd strongly recommend retraining your feats).

kvet · January 2019

I strongly suggest you look up Sharpedge's CW guide. He hasn't released a Mod15 version yet that I'm aware of, but Sharpedge (@thefabricant in the NW forums) has done more hard research into CW mechanics than any number of other players combined. Even if you don't follow his guild to the letter, it will give you tons of insight into how CW works and the #1 most important thing that separates a good player from a not-so-good one is the good ones understand how their build works, they understand the drawbacks and they know how to compensate for them, and they're well aware of how they best fit into a team. You shouldn't just use a guide as a cookie cutter, but rather use it to learn the ins and outs of your class. Trust me, a little education will make your experience much better.

nunya · January 2019

@prethen There are many guilds out there that don't care about whether you're a casual player - mine included. Hell, I have one or two players who haven't logged on in a year, and at least two others now approaching 6 months.

vorphied · January 2019

A lot of good advice in this thread, but one thing I’d caution is not to go too crazy with ArP early in your build. Until you do Chult, you don’t need more than 65% or so resistance ignored. AFAIK, the further increase in damage over the parenthetical log numbers simply reflects additional debuff modifiers, not that ArP beyond the target’s defense value is actually doing anything.

CW is one of the more difficult starter classes IMO because there are so many “wrong” ways to build and play, and they aren’t all obvious to newer players. This is an issue to some degree with all classes, but just slotting the wrong class features can destroy your damage.

prethen · January 2019

I would say the chances are very high I did not build this character very well (since I just went with what I thought looked good at the time). I'll look into a possible rebuild after seeing what the online guides, as noted above, have to say.

callumf · January 2019

Oh and be very careful about what you spend your AD on it is easy to waste a lot of time and effort grinding AD and realising you bought the wrong stuff.

Especially be careful about Enchants, Mounts and Companions - dont waste AD on upgrading the wrong companion for example. I have 7 legendary companions [cost nearly 10 million AD altogether] but I am now running with 2 legends and three purples and have better stat increase with them!

Its so easy to get an inflated item level which isnt actually very good for your character class!

kvet · January 2019

callumf#9018 said:

Its so easy to get an inflated item level which isnt actually very good for your character class!

Yes, callumf makes an important point here: Item Level isn't the end-all-be-all of determining a character effectiveness. It's not unheard of for 14 or 15K players to completely own 16, 17K players when the lower IL ppl fully understand their class and the 16K+ person just paid their way to the top. There's a lot of elitists that don't understand this reality and will judge you based purely on item level - forget those fools. Again - that's why you need a good guild that doesn't focus on arbitrary and misleading stats like item level and will run content based on the player's skills not their item levels.

pitmonster · January 2019

kvet said:

callumf#9018 said:

Its so easy to get an inflated item level which isnt actually very good for your character class!
Yes, callumf makes an important point here: Item Level isn't the end-all-be-all of determining a character effectiveness. It's not unheard of for 14 or 15K players to completely own 16, 17K players when the lower IL ppl fully understand their class and the 16K+ person just paid their way to the top. There's a lot of elitists that don't understand this reality and will judge you based purely on item level - forget those fools. Again - that's why you need a good guild that doesn't focus on arbitrary and misleading stats like item level and will run content based on the player's skills not their item levels.

Frankly this is a complaint I have had for a while, what I call the "cob webs". There is some great gear out there with cool powers and synergies but every new campaign we get more and more power creep that just adds more, boring, numbers to states and item level while being generally crappy gear.

pitmonster · January 2019

Outside of grinding out for AD and boons, you need to understand how mounts insignia bonuses work, how artifacts work, and the power of sets of artifacts and gear. I use the following spreadsheet for figuring out mount bonus...

https://bethel-95.github.io/Insignia-Bonuses/

As far as artifacts, many times you can find a cheap green version of a artifact that allows you to take it on a trail run. The cost to refine a item might be more expensive then to buy it epic on the AD market. And to get the set bonuses you only need the one you are going to use to be high level, you can just buy cheap greens to fulfill the set requirements till you can afford to upgrade them to rise your item level. And pay attention to not only the powers but the other bonuses like Power, Movement, etc.

Gear sets gets complicated. Its hard to balance cost with benefit. My personal opinion is just hold off on those and play the game longer and do those last.

As far as companions, there are tiers, flavor of the day, etc. The extra benefit between astronomical cost of top tier companions is really not that high compared to more affordable second tier. And if you can get away from just being DPS focused you can get some pretty cool effects from companions.

demonmonger · January 2019

> @prethen said:
> I'd love to get some advice on what I might be doing wrong or not doing based on what I'm experiencing.
>
> I'm a Controller Wizard. My average equipment level is 460 (for each piece, thanks to some advice for me to start the Barovia adventure!). I have my armor at 500 because I bought that in another campaign tree (which is too hard for me to play in for now). My total level value is a bit above 7500. I have a healing companion at level 25 and another companion (I think he's a mage at level 30).
>
> For areas like Icewind Dale, I do pretty well (although I can still get beaten if I get too bold). But, when I tried Barovia, I get my <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> handed to me very easily, so I can't get too far there. I forget another campaign tree I tried starting, but the same thing happens there and I just had to give up trying for now.
>
> I can't seem to find any way to level up my equipment. My guess is that maybe I haven't done certain campaigns that might help, but that's just a guess.
>
> I have two big gripes though that I wish I could fix (for free, if possible). First, my movement speed without mount is appalling. I'm slower than anyone else around me (especially other PC's). With a mount, I'm still pretty much the slowest of any PC I see (I see some serious zipping around that I really envy, but I don't know how those PC's get those seriously awesome mounts or just have a great personal movement speed). I have a couple of horses but I'm now riding a wolf.
>
> Second, I've seen lower level wizards clean house with some seriously awesome area of effect actions that I have no clue as to what they're using and it seems they can command it from encounter to encounter. I recall that recently I was doing my daily Random Queue and a 29th level wizard cleared the floor in a single action almost every time whereas I (as level 70) am sitting there killing off monsters one at a time with rays and encounter effects. What the hell am I missing out on here? For instance, the lightning action I have is not that effective since I have to delay every time by holding down the mouse button to get the maximum effect, plus it really doesn't do the serious harm that I'm seeing from other PC's.
>
> Thanks in advance for any advice...it'll be much appreciated.

What is your in game name... I'll send you some boosters

prethen · January 2019

My game name is "Theren Duskwalker".

You guys have come through with so many great suggestions, I'm not even sure where to start. I know this game can be a serious time sink so I'm trying to be a bit balanced about how much to try out at a time!

First off, now that I've realized I've started some campaigns too early, I've backed off on those. Second, I'm going to look into joining a guild soon (maybe right away and one that was suggested here). I have over 350K in AD and I've been tempted to upgrade my healer to Lvl 30 (the same healer I got for free at the beginning of the game). But, I'm afraid I might be throwing away AD and not going for a different companion, so I'll hold off for now. I really need a good healer though as there are too many encounters that I can get taken down very easily...I am VERY squishy.

So far, no traders in any of the campaigns I'm active in can offer any gear level better than I've got (460). Maybe I need to be patient and finish off some of these other campaigns and see where that takes me. For instance, I have not started the Maze or Underdark campaigns yet, but I probably will very soon, especially based on the comments here and from advice I've read recently about new Level 70 character play.

This thread is becoming an really good reference for me. Thanks again!

nunya · January 2019

prethen said:
My game name is "Theren Duskwalker".

They're asking about your @handle. For example, mine (here and in-game) is @nunya#5309.

prethen · January 2019

Whoops....it appears my handle is simply "@prethen".

pitmonster · January 2019

prethen said:
My game name is "Theren Duskwalker".

So far, no traders in any of the campaigns I'm active in can offer any gear level better than I've got (460). Maybe I need to be patient and finish off some of these other campaigns and see where that takes me. For instance, I have not started the Maze or Underdark campaigns yet, but I probably will very soon, especially based on the comments here and from advice I've read recently about new Level 70 character play.

This thread is becoming an really good reference for me. Thanks again!

You mentioned your gear is item level 460. As soon as hitting level 70 you should hit the AD market and buy some cheap level 490 Ravenloft gear. Most of it sells for 1000K or so, very cheap.

Using the AD market is a skill in of itself. But you should be able to set your search lv minimum to 70 and click the "usable by me" check box. Then click on the equipment tab on the left and click on head, chest, and arms (forget the exact names). You will need to arrow through the junk till you start getting to the better stuff, ghost, beast, etc (rares at item lv 490). Each one of these sets have various powers, pick the one that works for your class (power, armor pen, crit). Note, you need to get armor pen as close to 100% as possible for a DPS toon. As far as boots, pick the ones with the high movement stats as being slow sucks.

These are just stop gap armor. As you do your random dungeon runs for AD, you also get seals of the brave. Your max is 1200, make sure you trade those in before going over your max, the vendor is in the bazaar. First get rings for your summoned companion (pick ones with recovery so they spam their actions to allow your bonding stones on them to proc). Then outfit yourself with rings of the stats you need. Next, less important, upgrade your armor. Again, this is a stop gap, just to give you a little boost and raise your item level till you get better gear.

I assume you popped into Ravenloft to get the free gear. If not, the only encounter you have to do is against some werewolves and you get help from the NPCs. You might not be high enough to do Ravenloft but you can just grab the free stuff and leave. They all come with rank 8 enchantments that you can use (they are not even bound). Again, just stop gap gear and stuff to help you as you level up.

prethen · January 2019

I haven't tried Ravenloft yet, even though it's a bit too tough for me I guess I'll have to make a visit! I have seen some stuff in the AD market like you said. I was thinking that the stuff below level 500 might not be worth it since I'm at 460 now, but you might be right and it will give me an extra boost that I could see some better results. Thanks!

I've been playing at level 70 for a while...and boy, do I still suck!

Comments