It has been nine months without a single fix or buff to the Wizard class.
List of bugs present is growing.
People asking for the class to be buffed and fixed can be seen after each patch notes.
Instead of having fun with the Wizard class, we got ninjanerfs to most of our powers.
Wizard's community is completely revolted.
Lack of love for a Wizard class from Developer' studio has been very obvious for a very long time, starting from the lack of proper Neck/Belt/Arti set since MOD4, to the Tenser's Disc not having INT stat for as long as I can remember. We haven't had a single BiS gear for a Wizard since Thayan Book of the Dead, which was useful for one-two weeks only...
The irony is----> TENSER is a Wizard! Tenser's Disc should also provide INT like it gives benefits to other classes damage boost as well.
You need to do something very good and awesome for the Wizard community, because this is unacceptable.
In some previous patches you also gave us a COPY/PASTE patch notes from earlier mods! Horrid!
You did a horrible job on a Wizard class, and you persist doing a horrible job on a Wizard class. And it has to be said that you're effectively making people revolted.
True Neutral
Left the Game due to heavy Damage Control & Missing Spanish Language
5
Comments
My will to play is lower every day 😔
I would like to point out that the D&D Tenser was, in the lore, a wizard who created spells to help fight/move in a more physical style, rather than to enhance intellectual or arcane abilities.
Whatever version of D&D you take (post AD&D), Tenser's transformation (which is what the NWO Tenser's disc mount power is) was meant to transform a sepllcaster into kind of a fighter, enhancing his martial and physical abilities/stats at the cost of not being able to cast spell anymore until the effect wear off, and The Tenser's Disc was meant to help him carrying heavy things.
If I remember well, in NWN if you used the Tenser's transformation you were shiftshaped into a warrior wielding a Tenser's sword (a longsword+2 (or+3 can't remember) with +1d6 fire damages), with 20 str/con/dex (and other + things regarding saving throws).
Tenser was also credited for spells like Tenser's Brawl which was meant to make him able to fight barehand, the Tenser's Deadly Strike to make him able to deal more damages with melee/thrown weapons, Tenser's running warrior to make an ally fighter run as fast as a charging horse whatever the encumbrance was, Tenser's Staff of Smiting for his own non magical staff to have a huge damages buff, etc.
So all in all, in NWO no one should be able to use the Tenser's disc and transformation but the classes usually proficient in arcanes or magic devices :P, and it should still enhance the physical abilities, not the intell :P, which left us with thieves/rogues the only happy ones .
Have fun!
A sadly missed opportunity for a Repelled pun.
After M16 hit the combat was very, very slow. The class got very long cooldowns, paired with some very unspectecular At-Wills that has to be casted like 75% of all fights because Encounters are on cooldown. Basically every "action" was removed from the combat system for this class - only a boring caster class was left.
Almost every class has an exciting mechanic like the Arbiter Cleric, Ranger or all mechanics for the Healers and thats something the Wizard class lacks. A 4th encounter is not exciting. It is just another spell that is on cooldown for 15 seconds Furthermore A LOT of encounters are pretty useless and can't compare to similar ones from other classes.
The reason mentioned above were the ones that drove me away from this class. I would love to get back to my Wizard but the class is not fun for me since M16.
Yet, there are no nerfs to that.
The history of nerfing Wizard is always done hastily when in fact it's the content that is made poorly. It is a widely accepted consensus that Wizard was nerfed due to ToMM in its inception, but this nerf was executed poorly, hastily and without deeper understanding of the class itself nor how it affects class' performance in every other content as well as how the class itself performs in relation to other more desirable classes.
Some would argue that this is a cycle that is bound to happen in the history of Neverwinter, but Wizard somehow always ends up taking the biggest hit out of all other classes be it in item optimization, content itself or the role.
I wrote about that in one of my other topics from a historic standpoint.
There are so many things to point out that were left in the dust by developers, that it is sincerely shameful. I'll name just three:
- Ranged Combat Advantage, which had to be discussed on the forums prior to the implementation. This was fixed, luckily!
- Wizarding items, that benefit INT/CHA in a meaningful way. I don't recall when was the last time I equipped an item and thought "Yes, this is a Wizard item".
- Power abilities and animation casting. Many of these are so off and left untouched back from M15 or less. Icy Terrain compared to Bane or Smoke Bomb is a complete joke.
But as you can notice, there are people (even in this topic) who aren't aware of why Wizard is a bad class nor why Wizards are revolted (repelled, even).
Though, it's far from a laughing matter, I'm afraid...
Well, The Wizard is playable, barely. But it is more of a question how enjoyable it is to actually play a Wizard? And I don't mean for a newcomer.
Suffice to say, and with a major consensus, Wizard is not at all fun to play nor is it rewarding to pursue upgrading Wizard as much as it'd be upgrading any other class. I think only Tank would cost more to upgrade in comparison, but there are more benefits.
Regardless, I wholeheartedly assure you that Wizard players already had their doubts, huge, vast disappointments in both the game and development team behind many changes over the years, and have already been in horrid apathy many times before due to how bad Wizard was treated.
With M16 on the horizon, some "resetting" hope was instigated that class balance will be executed well because dev team has less work to do if powers are cut in half, no? That was brief and purposefully misleading as the fixes are taking such a long time, that this brings back apathy.
Soon enough, nerfs and ninjanerfs without any compensation for the already present bugs issued starting 2020.
The idea was that not all powers will be fixed as soon as possible on the Wizards because M16 was a huge deal that took a lot of time and effort to nail down, but turns out that many of those powers and issues with the Wizard are still present, were never fixed and on top of that there were unjust nerfs that followed. Some of those nerfs were reverted back.
I reckon you play many classes, so you can take a look at some of the Wizard's Feature powers and then compare those to other DPS paths.
You can also take a look at Wizard's magnitude encounter and at-will powers, compare those to other classes magnitude of the encounter powers.
Apparently, you already gave an answer that you aren't playing the Arcanist path. However, Thaum also took a pretty big hit that left it unplayable for a vast majority of people. The gameplay of a Wizard on Arcanist path is literally holding Ray of Frost, turning on Arcane Empowerment, and pressing encounters as soon as they come down from the CD.
But what when Wizard can't do that anymore? What when the AP gain becomes scarce? New Artifacts come up? Dungeons come with many enemies?
These things are left to wonder, were not addressed, and obviously there's no word on devs targeting that issue.
There was a "small fix" to Thaumaturge feature power and some shatter strike fixes, too, which did nothing in particular.
Since both paths are horrid, Wizard players tend to ask for an overhaul of the class, from ground up. That'd be the best case scenario. Just a bit of a fix at this point simply wouldn't cut it and wouldn't satisfy wizards.
I hope this might shed some light on the issue, which exists for quite some time now.
Historically throughout the 7 years (soon to be 8) of this game, wizards are the outcasts of all the classes. The first issue I noticed long ago was the Master of the Flame paragon path wasn't much to do with fire or fire spells. In fact, you ended up with an Ice Wizard who somewhat dabbled with fire. I even read the wizard bible by SharpEdge ( aka @thefabricant ) no end and they really put their heart and soul into that manual. It was April of 2019, when all classes took the hit with the generic cookie cutter builds.
Seems like every time I said, anything about the Fire versus Ice, or the wizard's power being out of balance, I was met with another player in disagreement that their class was nerfed harder than my wizard. If I made a suggestion on improvement, it wasn't D&D enough for them. It doesn't fall into the D&D standards! The players would shout. The whole game falls out of standards with our health being in the hundreds of thousands. But no one wants to see an "Action RPG MMO" with damage floaters saying 19, 14, 101 !Critical Strike! I imagine if they did, they would be playing DDO instead.
I grew tired of complaining directly at the company. I eventually stopped writing them letters as postage stamps cost money. If it makes you feel better vent all you want here. However remember to keep it upbeat, or moderators here will push the thread off into the unread abyss with the rest. I am getting back to playing my broken wizards in their broken game. Let me know, if or when, they fix or break something. Remember sunshine, unicorns, and rainbows everyone!
Have fun!
I played as a wizard from 1 to 19 modules, but it's been 4 days since I made a hunter and I don't regret it at all. I advise you to just change the class, and not wait 2-5 years until the hair is processed
The wizard class is the only one that lost his role. Controlling. That role dissapeared from the game and the wizard evolved to a dps class, but with the core of spells from his original role.
When I made a wizard in the beta, I loved the "controlish" aspect of the class, ofcourse dmg is important but I loved that balance between controling enemies and killing them, and the unique role in fights.
All this changes, and with lots of nerfs in both paths, ended in the actual situation where the wizards are bad at everything, and the worst thing is that is boring. Like @hastati96 says, the removal of recovery in mod 16 affected wizards the most.
Very long cooldowns with slow and buggy effects and long casting times, like icy terrain, conduit, steal time, ligntning bolt, shard (lol), even fireball is slow. In single target the powers are somehow ok, fast casting times and decent dmg.
All this powers need a rework to make the class more dinamic. If some classes can go to a group of enemies pop an encounter or 2 and kill everything, when we can start doing dmg, all the enemies are dead.
I would give some ideas but I dont know if they will do something to hear the players when they rework the class or they will give us the product finished, and only few changes available, like in mod 16.
Caturday Survivor
Elemental Evil Survivor
Undermontain Survivor
Mod20 Combat rework Survivor
Mod22 Refinement rework Survivor
Something like adds extremely low in resist to control [or no resist at all] but completely immune to damages (during all the fight or until a treshold on the boss is reached), dealing huge %health blows + %health DoT if they manage to land a hit on someone, and/or applying crippling debuffs, and/or not attacking but providing constant healing / shielding to the boss when they aren't controlled, etc). Or a boss that is not a single entity but rather a swarm of tiny weaklings attacking everyone no matter the aggro but very easy to kill + a more dangerous "core" who is sensible to aggro, each bite of the weaklings causing a bleeding DoT close to insignificant, but cumulative and uncurable before the end of the fight.
Wizards are complaining since mod 17. Many classes got deep attention by devs and became efficient and fun to play. Everytime a new mod was coming, I jumped to class section ot the preview patch note. Once it was about warlock, another time barbarian, hunter ranger or healer. On wizard it was always the rework of a feature followed by a huge nerf of this same feature (thaumaturge) or a 100th modification of Storm Spell (arcanist).
Ofc, saying that the wizard class is unplayable is a lot exagerated. But bugs and inconsistent powers are legions. Gameplay is too slow. Finally, a wizard in a Zariel trial party is clearly a handicap. Their only asset there is the Ray of Enfeeblement encounter (for reducing incoming damage and buffing party's magical damage).
My Wizard Guide:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JezPmehRjvkrHQKwEJ9tGGesDuekj2mcfKiWxlx56ns/edit?usp=sharing
My Arbiter Cleric guide:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UZGOcQIMLCh5I4lrH63REK5YVsa3Kpk1hOyfic21z8k/edit?usp=sharing
I'd also love to do so, & have tried, but as mentioned above there's no response which is quite frustrating. Case in point, Steal Time has a post in the bug report section of the forum going back to ~May iirc. There has not been a single post in that thread by anyone from Cryptic. No mods or devs have even acknowledged that there might be an issue in over 5 months even with fairly regular updates to the thread. There's lots of other bug reports on wizards too, like vorpal not proccing from ray of frost, that receive little to no attention. What exactly are we to think about this behavior & what are we supposed to do? Venting on the forums is literally our only option at this point.
I mean, you're right that we should be nice, but expecting sunshine & roses from a group of players who are clearly quite frustrated from lack of any noticeable recognition is unrealistic. Now we are supposed to wait a few more months for them to make changes to half of the class (supposedly, still haven't actually seen anything on the forums besides other players conjecture)? Even if they fix thaum, it won't solve the core issue of the class being a glitchy mess. Arcane Empowerment will still bug, vorpal still won't proc, random freezing will still happen, etc. Or maybe those problems won't continue to happen. But we have no way of knowing this because there's no communication coming from the other direction. So if you have viable ideas of how we can "get involved in the process", I'm all ears.
So. In the first instance, most of wizard's powers have long cooldowns wherein their magnitudes are low. Normally, you would place an extense cd to a powerful encounter, say 750 magnitude - 20 cd, but no, they have 150 - 250 magnitude powers with 15-20 cd.
On the other hand, Damage over time effects, like icy terrain, conduit, fanning the flame, RoE, that by the time we get their full benefit, other classes have already killed enemies with instant damage powers. And also, the situation with most of the class features and both paragons feats not offering something good.
So, i think the class needs a rework in most of their aspects, except for the single target arcanist.
The best Wizard had an encDps of ~450k - 500k. The strongest Ranger and Cleric were around 800k encDps, Barbarian around 700k encDps. Thats a difference of ~40% which classes like Ranger and Cleric are stronger than a Wizard in Zariel. The only class that was as weak as the Wizard was a DPS Fighter. Ofc every player's damage varies with his / her skill playing a class so I wouldn't generalize this numbers. There will be Wizards being close to a dmg of a Ranger.
An Arcanist Wizard may no not need a direct rework but if you compare the classes directly you will see that it a Wizard is so much weaker in endgame content like Zariel.
Next I took them to the Stronghold where each ran the follow encounters; Beast Attack, Drake Attack, and Devil Attack.
Will was in Beast Attack for 3 mins (est. 180 seconds) where he did 1,747,493 damage (est 9,700 DPS).
Will was in Devil Attack for 3 mins (est. 180 seconds) where he did 1,855,153 damage (est 10,300 DPS).
Will was in Drake Attack for 3 mins (est. 180 seconds) where he did 2,197,242 damage (est 12,206 DPS).
Llorna was in Beast Attack for 3 mins (est. 180 seconds) where she did 1,611,312 damage (est 8,950 DPS).
Llorna was in Devil Attack for 3 mins (est. 180 seconds) where she did 1,713,453 damage (est 9,500 DPS).
Llorna was in Drake Attack for 3 mins (est. 180 seconds) where she did 1,994,773 damage (est 11,000 DPS).
Silvane Starblade (rogue) with Xuna same three runs;
Beast Attack - 1,884,946 (estimated 10,470 DPS)
Devil Attack - 1,856,862 (estimated 10,316 DPS)
Drake Attack - 2,239,096 (estimated 12,439 DPS)
Now some might complain about builds, companions, or what gear they own. Both Will and Llorna are running invoker companion types at rank 40. Their boons are closely matched as well. While I can see a little difference here in stats, I still don't "feel different".
@greywynd those one liners of yours will end you up in the soup. I noticed your quote about vampires, I am always fond of Jack Crow's talk from John Carpenter's Vampires 1998. A lot of that rant.... cannot be repeated here, but it starts with; You ever seen a vampire? "No, I haven't.", replies Father Guiteau. No... Well first of all, they're not romantic. It's not like they're a bunch of (censored) (censored) hoppin' around in rented formal wear and seducing everybody in sight with cheesy Euro-trash accents, all right? Forget whatever you've seen in the movies: they don't turn into bats, crosses don't work. Garlic? You wanna try garlic? ...
Edit: added my Starblade / Xuna stats in for historical reference. Xuna is also invoker class.
However, this isn't the first time in the recent months where I've opened a topic or even made a few rants that reflects my opinion on the changes for the wizard (or lack thereof, rather, no?).
That is a reflection of apathy, so I can conclude that you do, in fact, play a Wizard. :>
Stay safe as well and thank you.