> I would rather see Arcane/Lightning-based feats for the arcanist and Repel could be changed to deal cold damage, add chill and perhaps leave behind a frozen trail (if it complies with d&d lore)
This would be so cool!
> Spell Mastery: One of the most disappointing changes is the partial removal of Spell Mastery Effects. These effects were part of what made the class interesting for me, and I'd gladly give up the 10% damage bonus on spell mastery to have them back. These effects added more interesting choices to character building and an interesting twist to an otherwise underused ability. Should the Spell Mastery effects be exactly like they were before? No! I'd rather have abilities that are both balanced and viable as a normal encounter and in the spell mastery slot. But I don't want that difference to be a 10% damage increase in most cases (Entangling Force pulling nearby enemies - I miss you)
I agree with this - Spell Mastery doesn't have to make OP versions of the powers, just different effect variations on the encounters encouraging choice in what you slot there depending on gameplay.
A cold based Repel could be changed to Cone of Cold, for extra D&D points.
Ratings have been rebalanced per player feedback and performance. Ratings now convert at a rate of 1000 points = 1% (changed from 500 = 1%). Enemy ratings for Critical Strike, Deflect, Combat Advantage, and Defense are now higher than the other ratings, so that their counter-ratings retain some value for players. Defense now caps at 50% damage reduction.
With this change, an additional change is needed for Eye of the Storm class feature to remain competitive with other features. It should now provide 20 000 Crit Chance rating to remain the same 20% crit chance bonus as it was.
Also, I hope that at least some of my earlier suggestions would be implemented before Undermountain release, especially the ones regarding class features and PP feats. They don't need much balancing and would simply make feats more Paragon Path-oriented and class features more universal for different kinds of players.
Today I tried to make a great hunter myself. It took about 17 minutes, 80 levelles with charms for max and new przemiotami. As for me, the game is not playable.
@volsalex#4337 check the Wizard blog ... they stated that tauma is cold/fire and arcanist is arcane/lightning .... my guestin is... why the heck we have got snap freeze and frigid winds in arcanist than ????
I really like most changes of the new module so far. There are just two things I am concerned about.
I always liked the actionpacked and dynamic gameplay of this game. Although At-Wills never really added to this - it was encounter, daily powers and blocking/dodging that are the true heart of the game (though this differs a bit from character to character, holding down the left mouse button is in general not the most interesting gameplay). For me, the gameplay feels a lot less dynamic with increased encounter cooldowns. This holds for every class, but is especially true for the wizard.
I agree with a lot of other users: decrease encounter cooldowns a bit, or give us some possibility to do so via class features or feats to maintain the fast combat dynamic that make this game so good (there could be a trade-off feat/class feature: dps for shorter cooldowns).
While I understand the reasoning behind simplifying feats and power choices for the players and make a noticeable difference between the two paragon paths, it takes out a bit too much of customization. Now paragon paths will feel differently, but all the wizards that have chosen one of the path will not. Consider not splitting the powers between the two paragon path too much, so that more combinations of powers are possible and thus a higher customization level for the players to make their wizards differ from other wizards.
I really like most changes of the new module so far. There are just two things I am concerned about.
I always liked the actionpacked and dynamic gameplay of this game. Although At-Wills never really added to this - it was encounter, daily powers and blocking/dodging that are the true heart of the game (though this differs a bit from character to character, holding down the left mouse button is in general not the most interesting gameplay). For me, the gameplay feels a lot less dynamic with increased encounter cooldowns. This holds for every class, but is especially true for the wizard.
I agree with a lot of other users: decrease encounter cooldowns a bit, or give us some possibility to do so via class features or feats to maintain the fast combat dynamic that make this game so good (there could be a trade-off feat/class feature: dps for shorter cooldowns).
While I understand the reasoning behind simplifying feats and power choices for the players and make a noticeable difference between the two paragon paths, it takes out a bit too much of customization. Now paragon paths will feel differently, but all the wizards that have chosen one of the path will not. Consider not splitting the powers between the two paragon path too much, so that more combinations of powers are possible and thus a higher customization level for the players to make their wizards differ from other wizards.
I completely agree with the above post. Maybe bring Spell Twisting back (with a reduced effect so that it does fit in the overall balancing.).
Spell Twisting was by far my favorite feat. It provided an interesting interaction between At-Wills and Encounters and had you thinking in every rotation in which order you would cast your spells and when the optimal timing was to reduce cooldowns with the At-Will. And of course, the reduced cooldowns made combat really fun as a wizard. I wouldn't mind at all if everything did less damage or the control would have a shorter duration as long as I don't have to spend have the fight on (not so interesting) At-Wills.
> @oaken#7261 said: > Arcane Stacks- So Far it's VERY HARD if not impossible to maintain arcane stacks at 5 let alone the proposed 10 with " A step above Mastery".. this is because of the insane cool downs. at the current state I just don't see this mechanic working....On a test dummy it took 15 seconds to build 5 arcane stacks and the stacks fell off in 4.5 seconds.. Again we need some At Wills that build stacks very quickly IF the stacks are going to drop off that fast...The payoff just is just not worth it... I strongly suggest you take a hard look at putting some time into creating some better At Wills for the Wizard if the cool-downs are going to be 15-20 seconds for encounters.
The Thaumaturge is in pretty good shape. I think the Arcanist has some needed adjustments:
Arcane Bolt (at will) have this one receive double damage from Arcane stacks. When i run Arcanist now, I choose Ray of Frost over Arcane Bolt.
There are two Ice Feats in Arcanist lineup. One is OK. Two makes no sense. The only way to produce chill stacks is Icy Terrain and Ray of Frost... which leads me to:
swap Shard of the Endless Avalanche with Entangling Force.
Give Entangling a Mastery effect that either gains two arcane stacks, or is like the old mastery version.
Rename Shard as "Freezing Sphere". This will give another AoE Chill power that everyone can use. Instead of giving arcane stacks every 4 seconds (useless), it will increase in magnitude by 50 every 4 seconds (like a time bomb), All enemies affected by the blast receive a stack of Chill.
I've heard some Thaumaturge resignation to this idea because they are using Entangling force for boss fights. Thaumaturge has a ton of options for this already: Ray of Enfeeble, Icy Rays, Chill Strike (off master), and Ray of Frost.
But if this is not enough single target damage... then you can go to the next step. Since Shard will be another Ice AoE, change the effect of Chill Strike on Mastery to: 'generates three chill stacks' (for chill management and instant freezing), and remove its AoE. Chill Strike becomes the Icy version of Entagling Force. Then, change the two-shot Icy Rays into an 8 second recharge single shot skill that gains double damage from Chill Stacks. Together, Chill Strike + Icy Rays becomes a boss killer. Icy Rays becomes much more similar to disintegrate and will be useful for clean up after AoE carnage.
From these changes, the Thamaturge becomes flexible. The Arcanist gains a way to build Arcane stacks faster, and an at-will that truly shines and can take advantage of Arcane Mastery.
@volsalex#4337 check the Wizard blog ... they stated that tauma is cold/fire and arcanist is arcane/lightning .... my guestin is... why the heck we have got snap freeze and frigid winds in arcanist than ????
I read the blog as well, looks like they delayed its posting so that they could mention recently added Fireball in it))
And this is the reason why I suggested to move first feat to Thau tree and replace it with Arcane Mastery crit severity feat in Arcanist tree, and replace second feat with identical straight damage increase. It could be a buff with random value, similar to live Uncontrolled Obliteration feat, or just an Arcane based damage increase. It can be easily balanced with average value taken into account as the basis (Frigid Winds, for example, adds 1% damage per stack of chill, so it's about 4% damage increase if freeze with 6 stack maintaining is taken into account). Instead of it, they could add 1-7% version of Uncontrolled Obliteration and receive pretty much the same damage bonus, (average bonus is about 4% still), or replace Frigid Winds with a feat that increases bonus from Arcane Mastery to Arcane spells only by 1% per stack (average bonus is about 2.5%/5% for A Step above Mastery feat, but only for Arcane spells, so it is not out of line with 4% all damage bonus). Both versions would remove necessity to stack Chill for Arcanists to deal max damage, are also thematical and fit well for their alternative feat (so that player can choose between random proc of Chaos Magic and random damage bonus/controlled but slowly accumulating damage bonus).
As I suspect, they really won't make big changes to classes till next module, but these changes aren't big and I doubt that they would make Wizard unbalanced, but at least then Thau would still have Fire-Cold feats with quite useful and suitable Snap Freeze in its tree, and Arcanist would have only Arcane-Lightning feats in its tree.
I just read the DevBlog about wizard Is it written on the knee ?? (I had the same feeling about Warlock, Rogue and Ranger blogs) Barbarian, Fighter, Cleric and Paladin blogs were pasionate, full of details, encouraging When i read the Wizard blog it was like... meeeeh i have no idea what to write so ill wtite about fireball (that we begged for with tears in our eyes, cuz we didnt want to be circus jesters with Cataclism in our repertoire). I thought that this blog was wtitten long long ago as a general assumption of the Wizard class. Speaking of general assumption: "The Thaumaturge is a wizard who focuses on the duality of fire and ice magics. This is most noticeable in their ability to apply both chill and smolder to their targets which can combine into rimefire that gives the best of both worlds."
-Agree.
"The wizard paragon path Arcanist utilizes arcane and electrical magic to power their attacks. Whether they are summoning arcane bolts from the sky, unleashing electrical storms upon their foes, or stealing time from their enemies to empower themselves, Arcanists have a variety of options on how to fight. While some Arcanists may focus on building up their arcane powers to maximum potential, others may choose to spell weave their different types of magics to keep their enemies on their toes, or flat on their backs."
-"unleashing electrical storms upon their foes." . . . Where ?? When ?? How ?? What spell ?? -"or stealing time from their enemies to empower themselves" . . . Does it mean we will get some change on Steal Time ?? or by empower themselves u mean 1 stack of arcane mastery ??
"The wizard is a master of many types of magic, as for which ones to use is up to you. Whether fire or lightning, arcane or cold, wizards are formidable adventurers worthy to take on the most challenging content."
-does it mean we will get a significant lightning spell/spells ?? because now we have got laughable Sudden Storm [encounter], Maelstrom of Chaos [daily](i would sell my soul to get this skill as an encounter, without the weak knockdown effect) and Storm Pillar [at-will] (ohhhh I still forget its Lightning Bolt not Storm Pillar anymore, that is only lightning themed and satisfying spell)
The lack of communication is depressing. Devs, or shall I say @noworries#8859 abandoned us, the Wizards. I would like to get some answers, I would like to be informed. I check the forum every day, and Ive got only one impression. People are giving up to make the feedback. Because of frustrations, because of disappointment...
Sorry for quoting myself but this is a text I lost 3 days ago and i really wanted to share my thoughts with ya all. ps. thank you forum moderators for bringing it back :*
Spell Twisting was by far my favorite feat. It provided an interesting interaction between At-Wills and Encounters and had you thinking in every rotation in which order you would cast your spells and when the optimal timing was to reduce cooldowns with the At-Will. And of course, the reduced cooldowns made combat really fun as a wizard. I wouldn't mind at all if everything did less damage or the control would have a shorter duration as long as I don't have to spend have the fight on (not so interesting) At-Wills.
I noticed Spell Twisting does stil exists as a feat, just not with an effect on Cooldown anymore, but AP. Although I had it even skilled as a feat, the effect was so negligible, I didn't notice I had it. Also, it is not a choice anymore, because you run out of encounter quickly and cast At-Wills anyways, so it feels more like a passive AP gain.
I do like the duration of control spells though, control really does matter again. I have to admit that having longer cooldowns does lead to a better timing of when to cast your encounters (chain them with other players control spells), although it still feels a bit less dynamic and actionpacked as before.
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arcanjo86Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,093Arc User
edited April 2019
@noworries#8859 according to dev blog about cw thaum is ice and fire wizard, why didnt you made chill stacks and smolder an exclusive mechanic to thaum paragon and add a lightning mechanic + arcane stacks as arcanist paragon mechanic, its time to post pone the game release with such a class broken mechanic, with this idea for the wizard class its time to add a lightning charge mechanic to arcanist and remove arcane powers from thaum and make it a fire/ice based spells paragon with some controls based on ice, some ring of fire or ring of ice with a rooting effect similar to sigil of the wizard artifact(ring of ice idea with a slow effect and the ring of fire a root effect like lava volcano open with rocks rooting enemie/s), eruption spell where a small ring of fire does huge single target damage(spell mastery slot reduced magnitude value but becomes a 20' aoe aimed aroun the main target), make chill strike a huge single target damage encounter, chill and smolder effects from feats and class features need to be only taum, arcane mastery and lightning effects from feats and class features exclusive for thaum, the dev blogs doesnt reflect what the class offers on preview lots of stuff is broken and dont make sense like the dev blog say so, its time to stop lying about the goals of the future of the wizard class.
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mamalion1234Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,415Arc User
THAUMATURGE is definitely feeling good with the Fireball Nuke. The damage is great for AOE but feel's very week on single target. Maybe that is a bug with the skill right now and needs tuning I don't know,.. but there is something going on with damage not feeling that Nuke on single target. Almost seams like the mastery effect could or should be if the fire ball hits 2 or fewer targets the magnitude or damage is increased by x%. I'm really enjoying the THAUMATURGE right now, a few more tweeks here and there but digging it for sure!!
The Arcanist however i still have the same issues with I've spoke of several times here. I Love Disintegrate it's become one of my favorite skills of any game i've ever played a wizard in!! But it's lacking that nuke feeling and is just MEH for me right now AND Not have a Good AOE At-Will for the Arcanist I think is a mistake. Acrane stacks build up to slowly and fall off too fast.
Playing the Arcanist is like using a single shot bolt gun in a Mob fight when it requires a shot gun. I've state my case on this several times. If the Arcanist is just going to be the Boss killer loadout then ok. But if we're to have some choice then Arcanist needs a true AOE At-Will.
All and All... The changes with loot from bosses/chests, loosing some of the time gated mechanics and over all Undermountain game play is a huge step froward and I'm very excited to see everything come together and to see the final polished Mod16 hit!
Undermountain is really fantastic over all!!! Amazing Job cryptic!
Thank you Cryptic for all your hard work and listening to your customers
How is Relative haste supposed to work? Shouldn't it be clearer if it works as: When you apply a stack of chill, the cooldown rate of your powers is increased by 1%.
Icy veins is too penalizing compared to the live version, 3 stacks wouldnt hurt. Explosive power - empowering flames buff, seems to not be working as the buff isn't consumed. Direct flames seems to nullify smoldering recovery feat, I would like to suggest to rework it to Arcane Flames: Your arcane powers now apply smolder to targets -> this way, thaumaturge can make use of the first acarne powers we get and have more variety for builds. As we don't benefit from them for the ice-fire based wizard d
Arcanist Feats Spell twisting, change it to -> Speed up cooldown rates by 1% Alacrity, change it to -> 5 seconds Snap freeze and frigid winds need to be reworked Chaos magic, be 15% chance Assailing force, is it working?
Note to Devs please: My idea for a future mod seeing the guts have been ripped out of Control Wizard and you may as well go all-out.
Get rid of the two trees for offense, combine them into one powerhouse choice of multi-spells of damage with a small amount of CC added. Damage is up there with HR and this tree is used for pure DPS. This tree choice has all the best spells of damage that CW has ever owned, all combined as an excting buffet of damage spells, at-wills and encounters, dailies etc. This tree can use the full range of arcane, cold and fire based damage spells.
Make a new tree choice focusing almost totally on control maneuvers. This tree choice has a vast array of ways of moving, stopping, freezing, tossing around, grouping, placing, de-buffing and otherwise disabling enemies, even bosses. This tree does not do very much on the damage scale, but it is used to make life easier for the rest of a party/team. This tree allows you to focus on sorting out all the mobs for your team mates. When this class is surrounded by mobs, instead of nuking them, this version of CW has extremely good methods of self-protection and not much damage is done, also it has the ability to just freeze all mobs within 20 meters in all directions in a circle for 6 seconds duration repeatedly almost used like an at-will, so the CW can get away easily from damaging mobs.
Because as the name suggests, it is a 'Control' Wizard. Clerics heal, tanks take damage and draw aggro, others do DPS, let Control Wizards have a control build. Our control mechanic is not being fully realized. As I stated in the above post, they could easily survive with the protection mechanism I suggested. I read one girl ages ago I forget on what post and where it was, saying that she was sick of seeing Control Wizards who acted like pseudo TR's but without the knives. CW is not all about DPS, it's also about control. It's in the freaking name. Look, you would have two extremely fun and viable tree choices in Control Wizard, one would do all the pure DPS with all spells handy for those who need or enjoy that build, you would have another extremely viable choice in the control version. As there are loadouts, people already can swap around to suit what they need for a battle, so it makes sense to group all the DPS damage aspects of the build into one place. The other choice contains all the controls/de-buffs for party support.
Control spell example: You see a couple of your team mates being mobbed by enemies, you throw down a large golden lassoo on the ground around them and setting the spell-off gathers all those enemies within the circle you have placed down and throws them all quickly in one direction to a distance of 50 meters and throws them on their backs. Used as an encounter, you are able to repeatedly drag mobs off your team mates from 80 meters away and give them some breathing space.
The big question is why is Icy Terrain the only encounter which can multi-proc Critical Conflagration (smolder)?
In a way, I'm glad that Fanning the Flame and Conduit of Ice were made worthless because I never like the concept of AoE DoT centered on one target and disappearing once the target was killed but I do wonder why Icy Terrain should be the only winner.
Because as the name suggests, it is a 'Control' Wizard. Clerics heal, tanks take damage and draw aggro, others do DPS, let Control Wizards have a control build. Our control mechanic is not being fully realized. As I stated in the above post, they could easily survive with the protection mechanism I suggested. I read one girl ages ago I forget on what post and where it was, saying that she was sick of seeing Control Wizards who acted like pseudo TR's but without the knives. CW is not all about DPS, it's also about control. It's in the freaking name. Look, you would have two extremely fun and viable tree choices in Control Wizard, one would do all the pure DPS with all spells handy for those who need or enjoy that build, you would have another extremely viable choice in the control version. As there are loadouts, people already can swap around to suit what they need for a battle, so it makes sense to group all the DPS damage aspects of the build into one place. The other choice contains all the controls/de-buffs for party support.
I mean, there's a reason they're removing the word Control from the Control Wizard...
It's fun when you play in a different game than NW and you see true "Control" on mobs and boss WOW on boss it is really possible,we have a chance for control effects on boss for skill like eg: - Icy terrain slow attack speed for BOSS - Chill Strike or Rapel stun Boss for 1 sec interrupting his attack but this attack will be released anyway, someone will say that "but it will still be used" true but sometimes saves HAMSTER from death for members on party.
Maybe it is too difficult for a developer to do it but In NW it was always been, we can't do it, let's remove it.
P.S
for new players it will not matter, because they are new players.
> @gildriador said: > > Personally, I would like to have a wider AoE and see a bigger fire animation, like this: > > > > With this change, the Thaumaturge path will have an AoE encounter that can be compared to Steal Time.
I agree with this, Steal Time is such a hard hitting aoe on live that only Arcanist gets now..
> @rysiek86 said: >-Final Daily in Thaumaturge gives 1 stack of chill (is this a joke?) and throws the mobs like a dolls over the battlefield instad of gathering them to easier kills because of knockdown ( id say its knockback ) mechanic that is totaly useless on any encounter or daily.
> @oaken#7261 said: > The Arcanist is fun, but not having a AOE at-will is really annoying. > > > I can't speak for other classes as I've not really played them very much other that the HR but I can say this to "fix" what i feel is hampering the wizard and I know I've spammed this before but I KNOW this will work and be fantastic for the Arcanist path! > > The arcanist need a way to keep mobs off of him while the encounters are coming back and arcane stacks fall off so fast it just not fun or worth building them up. > > Please,Please, Please... remove Arcane Bolt and create a Arcane lightning at-will that chains mobs and has a chance to stun for 3-5 seconds. > > Every time we stun we build a arcane stack and acrane stacks are "infinite" until disintegrate consumes all acrane stacks for a big nuke...Rinse and repeat. > Disintegrate on mastery- each arcane stack give a 2% Dps boost to disintegrate's hit. > > This mechanic keeps us alive in solo play and prevents us from kiting everywhere and makes the arcane powers we do have more impactful and worth the cool down, and most importantly it could be a ton of fun and very rewarding!! > > Additionally- the chain/stun effect can help in group play for melee classes and give the arcanist wizard something to do to help the team as our current at-wills are useless.
> @zimxero#8085 said: > I dont see a problem with Snap Freeze & Frigid Winds in the Arcane Paragon because: > > Arcane can use Chill, and something should enhance them so they are not worthless skills for all Arcane wizards. Just because the feats don't synergize with your vision of a super-build, doesn't mean they should be removed to instead further bolster arcane stacks.
Also, not sure if the devs had this in mind, but keeping options for chill use on Arcanist could provide playstyle options for pvp.
> @krevg said: > In my opinion the main purpose of a game, for the customers, is for it to be fun. The significant decrease in the flow of the game, due to the longer CDs and loss of movement buffs, decreases the fun. I would highly suggest reducing the cool down times and providing a corresponding reduction in damage. I would much rather do less damage regularly, than find myself waiting.
This is the main concern I share with many of the players here - loss of the fun factor...
> I dont see a problem with Snap Freeze & Frigid Winds in the Arcane Paragon because:
>
> Arcane can use Chill, and something should enhance them so they are not worthless skills for all Arcane wizards. Just because the feats don't synergize with your vision of a super-build, doesn't mean they should be removed to instead further bolster arcane stacks.
Also, not sure if the devs had this in mind, but keeping options for chill use on Arcanist could provide playstyle options for pvp.
Acording to the DEVBLOG... Thaumaturge = Fire/Frost and Arcanist = Arcane/Lightning. So basicly... Snap Freeze and Frigid Winds dont match Arcanist at all !!
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lordaeolosMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 167Arc User
In my opinion the main purpose of a game, for the customers, is for it to be fun. The significant decrease in the flow of the game, due to the longer CDs and loss of movement buffs, decreases the fun. I would highly suggest reducing the cool down times and providing a corresponding reduction in damage. I would much rather do less damage regularly, than find myself waiting.
This is the main concern I share with many of the players here - loss of the fun factor...
Going back to the roots of D&D, an encounter power is defined as being a power that can be used Once per encounter, and are renewed after a short rest. It's my understanding that the designers are trying to move us closer to the D&D roots... If we want to stay true to the roots (calling out everyone that cried over no fireball), then encounters should be powerful with a very long cool-down period (long enough so they are typically used once per normal encounter). I'm a firm believer that the mod 15 (and earlier) meta was absurd with high recovery CW's (like me with 32k recovery) endlessly rotating through encounters like they were at wills and dailies like they were encounters, it twisted the roots of the game beyond recognition. I'm going to be patient here as the designers and developers work to balance encounters/at wills/ dailies. I see the Wizard class as being in a better position for go live than several other classes (largely thanks to having people like sharpedge in our corner since closed beta)... will it be perfect? No.
Maybe the core of the problem is that there are two clear competing camps of end-gamers
1. Fun is ROFL Stomping everything (I do fit in this group as is massages my bloated ego ) 2. Fun is doing challenging content
... The RoFL Stompers have had the stage almost entirely since beta, maybe it's time for a pendulum swing in favor of group 2.
"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."
3. Fun is enjoyable to play,.. and not twiddling your thumbs most of the time in combat regardless of whether you're ROFL stomping or taking on something challenging
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lordaeolosMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 167Arc User
3. Fun is enjoyable to play,.. and not twiddling your thumbs most of the time in combat regardless of whether you're ROFL stomping or taking on something challenging
I have yet to "twiddle my thumbs" in mod 16 content on preview with the wizard. While you are twiddling your thumbs waiting for encounters to cool down, i'm doing damage with at-wills, dodging big attacks, and generally having a good time of things. I'm also forced to play more strategically, I find I need to manage my rotation even more closely than before, and not waste powers in certain scenarios... Look, I get it, this is a big change for all of us (and change can be hard), and in many ways it's a brand new game... But the games designers have made it very clear that they wanted to get away from the "encounters are your at-wills" meta that has been rampant in the game for a long time, and get closer to the roots of what makes this a WoTC licence product.
I'm not trying to flame you, or anyone else in this thread, but we have less than two weeks until this goes live. We are all going to need to relearn parts of this game, the old way isn't going to come back no matter how many crocodile tears we shed, or HAMSTERS fits we throw. In my opinion (some based on my own experience as a developer), we are not going to see any major changes before go live at this point, and should focus our attention on bugs, and the scaling issues... If you or anyone else feels that this mod is unplayable, then the best way to vote, is to not play... I myself will continue to play, am looking forward to most of the changes, and will soldier through the tough spots... why? because nearly all of the changes made were needed for the health of the game, and I am having a lot more fun on preview, than I am in live.
"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."
Comments
Also, I hope that at least some of my earlier suggestions would be implemented before Undermountain release, especially the ones regarding class features and PP feats. They don't need much balancing and would simply make feats more Paragon Path-oriented and class features more universal for different kinds of players.
I always liked the actionpacked and dynamic gameplay of this game. Although At-Wills never really added to this - it was encounter, daily powers and blocking/dodging that are the true heart of the game (though this differs a bit from character to character, holding down the left mouse button is in general not the most interesting gameplay).
For me, the gameplay feels a lot less dynamic with increased encounter cooldowns. This holds for every class, but is especially true for the wizard.
I agree with a lot of other users: decrease encounter cooldowns a bit, or give us some possibility to do so via class features or feats to maintain the fast combat dynamic that make this game so good (there could be a trade-off feat/class feature: dps for shorter cooldowns).
While I understand the reasoning behind simplifying feats and power choices for the players and make a noticeable difference between the two paragon paths, it takes out a bit too much of customization. Now paragon paths will feel differently, but all the wizards that have chosen one of the path will not.
Consider not splitting the powers between the two paragon path too much, so that more combinations of powers are possible and thus a higher customization level for the players to make their wizards differ from other wizards.
Spell Twisting was by far my favorite feat. It provided an interesting interaction between At-Wills and Encounters and had you thinking in every rotation in which order you would cast your spells and when the optimal timing was to reduce cooldowns with the At-Will. And of course, the reduced cooldowns made combat really fun as a wizard. I wouldn't mind at all if everything did less damage or the control would have a shorter duration as long as I don't have to spend have the fight on (not so interesting) At-Wills.
>
Arcane Stacks- So Far it's VERY HARD if not impossible to maintain arcane stacks at 5 let alone the proposed 10 with " A step above Mastery".. this is because of the insane cool downs. at the current state I just don't see this mechanic working....On a test dummy it took 15 seconds to build 5 arcane stacks and the stacks fell off in 4.5 seconds..
Again we need some At Wills that build stacks very quickly IF the stacks are going to drop off that fast...The payoff just is just not worth it... I strongly suggest you take a hard look at putting some time into creating some better At Wills for the Wizard if the cool-downs are going to be 15-20 seconds for encounters.
This seems very problematic..
Arcane Bolt (at will) have this one receive double damage from Arcane stacks. When i run Arcanist now, I choose Ray of Frost over Arcane Bolt.
There are two Ice Feats in Arcanist lineup. One is OK. Two makes no sense. The only way to produce chill stacks is Icy Terrain and Ray of Frost... which leads me to:
swap Shard of the Endless Avalanche with Entangling Force.
Give Entangling a Mastery effect that either gains two arcane stacks, or is like the old mastery version.
Rename Shard as "Freezing Sphere". This will give another AoE Chill power that everyone can use. Instead of giving arcane stacks every 4 seconds (useless), it will increase in magnitude by 50 every 4 seconds (like a time bomb), All enemies affected by the blast receive a stack of Chill.
I've heard some Thaumaturge resignation to this idea because they are using Entangling force for boss fights. Thaumaturge has a ton of options for this already: Ray of Enfeeble, Icy Rays, Chill Strike (off master), and Ray of Frost.
But if this is not enough single target damage... then you can go to the next step. Since Shard will be another Ice AoE, change the effect of Chill Strike on Mastery to: 'generates three chill stacks' (for chill management and instant freezing), and remove its AoE. Chill Strike becomes the Icy version of Entagling Force. Then, change the two-shot Icy Rays into an 8 second recharge single shot skill that gains double damage from Chill Stacks. Together, Chill Strike + Icy Rays becomes a boss killer. Icy Rays becomes much more similar to disintegrate and will be useful for clean up after AoE carnage.
From these changes, the Thamaturge becomes flexible. The Arcanist gains a way to build Arcane stacks faster, and an at-will that truly shines and can take advantage of Arcane Mastery.
And this is the reason why I suggested to move first feat to Thau tree and replace it with Arcane Mastery crit severity feat in Arcanist tree, and replace second feat with identical straight damage increase. It could be a buff with random value, similar to live Uncontrolled Obliteration feat, or just an Arcane based damage increase. It can be easily balanced with average value taken into account as the basis (Frigid Winds, for example, adds 1% damage per stack of chill, so it's about 4% damage increase if freeze with 6 stack maintaining is taken into account). Instead of it, they could add 1-7% version of Uncontrolled Obliteration and receive pretty much the same damage bonus, (average bonus is about 4% still), or replace Frigid Winds with a feat that increases bonus from Arcane Mastery to Arcane spells only by 1% per stack (average bonus is about 2.5%/5% for A Step above Mastery feat, but only for Arcane spells, so it is not out of line with 4% all damage bonus). Both versions would remove necessity to stack Chill for Arcanists to deal max damage, are also thematical and fit well for their alternative feat (so that player can choose between random proc of Chaos Magic and random damage bonus/controlled but slowly accumulating damage bonus).
As I suspect, they really won't make big changes to classes till next module, but these changes aren't big and I doubt that they would make Wizard unbalanced, but at least then Thau would still have Fire-Cold feats with quite useful and suitable Snap Freeze in its tree, and Arcanist would have only Arcane-Lightning feats in its tree.
ps. thank you forum moderators for bringing it back :*
I do like the duration of control spells though, control really does matter again. I have to admit that having longer cooldowns does lead to a better timing of when to cast your encounters (chain them with other players control spells), although it still feels a bit less dynamic and actionpacked as before.
How is Relative haste supposed to work?
Shouldn't it be clearer if it works as: When you apply a stack of chill, the cooldown rate of your powers is increased by 1%.
Icy veins is too penalizing compared to the live version, 3 stacks wouldnt hurt.
Explosive power - empowering flames buff, seems to not be working as the buff isn't consumed.
Direct flames seems to nullify smoldering recovery feat, I would like to suggest to rework it to Arcane Flames: Your arcane powers now apply smolder to targets -> this way, thaumaturge can make use of the first acarne powers we get and have more variety for builds. As we don't benefit from them for the ice-fire based wizard d
Spell twisting, change it to -> Speed up cooldown rates by 1%
Alacrity, change it to -> 5 seconds
Snap freeze and frigid winds need to be reworked
Chaos magic, be 15% chance
Assailing force, is it working?
Get rid of the two trees for offense, combine them into one powerhouse choice of multi-spells of damage with a small amount of CC added. Damage is up there with HR and this tree is used for pure DPS. This tree choice has all the best spells of damage that CW has ever owned, all combined as an excting buffet of damage spells, at-wills and encounters, dailies etc. This tree can use the full range of arcane, cold and fire based damage spells.
Make a new tree choice focusing almost totally on control maneuvers. This tree choice has a vast array of ways of moving, stopping, freezing, tossing around, grouping, placing, de-buffing and otherwise disabling enemies, even bosses. This tree does not do very much on the damage scale, but it is used to make life easier for the rest of a party/team. This tree allows you to focus on sorting out all the mobs for your team mates. When this class is surrounded by mobs, instead of nuking them, this version of CW has extremely good methods of self-protection and not much damage is done, also it has the ability to just freeze all mobs within 20 meters in all directions in a circle for 6 seconds duration repeatedly almost used like an at-will, so the CW can get away easily from damaging mobs.
In a way, I'm glad that Fanning the Flame and Conduit of Ice were made worthless because I never like the concept of AoE DoT centered on one target and disappearing once the target was killed but I do wonder why Icy Terrain should be the only winner.
It's fun when you play in a different game than NW and you see true "Control" on mobs and boss WOW on boss it is really possible,we have a chance for control effects on boss for skill like eg:
- Icy terrain slow attack speed for BOSS
- Chill Strike or Rapel stun Boss for 1 sec interrupting his attack but this attack will be released anyway, someone will say that "but it will still be used" true but sometimes saves HAMSTER from death for members on party.
Maybe it is too difficult for a developer to do it but In NW it was always been, we can't do it, let's remove it.
P.S
for new players it will not matter, because they are new players.
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> Personally, I would like to have a wider AoE and see a bigger fire animation, like this:
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> With this change, the Thaumaturge path will have an AoE encounter that can be compared to Steal Time.
I agree with this, Steal Time is such a hard hitting aoe on live that only Arcanist gets now..
>-Final Daily in Thaumaturge gives 1 stack of chill (is this a joke?) and throws the mobs like a dolls over the battlefield instad of gathering them to easier kills because of knockdown ( id say its knockback ) mechanic that is totaly useless on any encounter or daily.
This is a very sad final daily unlock..
> The Arcanist is fun, but not having a AOE at-will is really annoying.
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> I can't speak for other classes as I've not really played them very much other that the HR but I can say this to "fix" what i feel is hampering the wizard and I know I've spammed this before but I KNOW this will work and be fantastic for the Arcanist path!
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> The arcanist need a way to keep mobs off of him while the encounters are coming back and arcane stacks fall off so fast it just not fun or worth building them up.
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> Please,Please, Please... remove Arcane Bolt and create a Arcane lightning at-will that chains mobs and has a chance to stun for 3-5 seconds.
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> Every time we stun we build a arcane stack and acrane stacks are "infinite" until disintegrate consumes all acrane stacks for a big nuke...Rinse and repeat.
> Disintegrate on mastery- each arcane stack give a 2% Dps boost to disintegrate's hit.
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> This mechanic keeps us alive in solo play and prevents us from kiting everywhere and makes the arcane powers we do have more impactful and worth the cool down, and most importantly it could be a ton of fun and very rewarding!!
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> Additionally- the chain/stun effect can help in group play for melee classes and give the arcanist wizard something to do to help the team as our current at-wills are useless.
Chain lightning would be so awesome!
> I dont see a problem with Snap Freeze & Frigid Winds in the Arcane Paragon because:
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> Arcane can use Chill, and something should enhance them so they are not worthless skills for all Arcane wizards. Just because the feats don't synergize with your vision of a super-build, doesn't mean they should be removed to instead further bolster arcane stacks.
Also, not sure if the devs had this in mind, but keeping options for chill use on Arcanist could provide playstyle options for pvp.
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In my opinion the main purpose of a game, for the customers, is for it to be fun. The significant decrease in the flow of the game, due to the longer CDs and loss of movement buffs, decreases the fun. I would highly suggest reducing the cool down times and providing a corresponding reduction in damage. I would much rather do less damage regularly, than find myself waiting.
This is the main concern I share with many of the players here - loss of the fun factor...
Maybe the core of the problem is that there are two clear competing camps of end-gamers
1. Fun is ROFL Stomping everything (I do fit in this group as is massages my bloated ego
2. Fun is doing challenging content
... The RoFL Stompers have had the stage almost entirely since beta, maybe it's time for a pendulum swing in favor of group 2.
Guild Leader: Mistaken Identity (formerly Midnight Express)
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"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."
I'm not trying to flame you, or anyone else in this thread, but we have less than two weeks until this goes live. We are all going to need to relearn parts of this game, the old way isn't going to come back no matter how many crocodile tears we shed, or HAMSTERS fits we throw. In my opinion (some based on my own experience as a developer), we are not going to see any major changes before go live at this point, and should focus our attention on bugs, and the scaling issues... If you or anyone else feels that this mod is unplayable, then the best way to vote, is to not play... I myself will continue to play, am looking forward to most of the changes, and will soldier through the tough spots... why? because nearly all of the changes made were needed for the health of the game, and I am having a lot more fun on preview, than I am in live.
Guild Leader: Mistaken Identity (formerly Midnight Express)
My Twitch Stream
See my Youtube Channel for guides and more
"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."