test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Wizard Power Adjustments
noworries
Member, Cryptic Developer Posts: 651Cryptic Developer › Cryptic Developer
in The Library
Wizard could use some adjustments, as you all know. This time we're going to try something a little bit different.
Format for this thread:
Make a post saying the one power on wizard you think is most in need of an update and why. You can also feel free to make a suggestion on how to change it.
Or you can make a post giving a +1 to someone else's suggestion.
Only your first post will be counted and if multiple powers are listed, only the first one in the list will be counted. Some posts may end up getting deleted to keep the thread clean and on track.
This doesn't guarantee that all of the powers called out will be changed or that the changes will be the suggestions given, but this will be used to determine what powers to focus on.
Please keep the thread on topic. No suggesting changes to other classes besides Wizard.
Format for this thread:
Make a post saying the one power on wizard you think is most in need of an update and why. You can also feel free to make a suggestion on how to change it.
Or you can make a post giving a +1 to someone else's suggestion.
Only your first post will be counted and if multiple powers are listed, only the first one in the list will be counted. Some posts may end up getting deleted to keep the thread clean and on track.
This doesn't guarantee that all of the powers called out will be changed or that the changes will be the suggestions given, but this will be used to determine what powers to focus on.
Please keep the thread on topic. No suggesting changes to other classes besides Wizard.
Tagged:
21
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
If I would have to choose a specific thing for solo play: Grant CA over hard controlled enemies. (frozen solid, lifted into the air) This would be a huge help in solo play, would still require some skill/choices from the player, and would not have major impact in any balance for the group content.
Silv3ry on YouTube
2) adding magnitude to encounters (they are way lower then any other class in the game)
3) fix smolder ( yes we know dots do less damage then anything but it dont even work now)
4) we get 4 encounters yet only 2 do damage over 4% total (single target arcane that is)
5) class features that actually work ( at the moment only 3 work evocation for aoe, chilling presence for single target and storm spell for both aoe and single target)
on to aoe... for arcane
1) icy terrain is way too small at 15' at best get 3-4 mobs in it ( if they dont stop 1 foot outside of icy) not to mention if you stun anything in icy terrain, they no longer take damage from icy terrain
2) cool down for encounters are way too long.. no chance at getting more then 4 stacks of arcane mastery
3) Lighting bolt might as well be a melee encounter... anything further then a few feet from you dont get hit by it and the 5' radius wont hit a single extra target
Wizard is literally the only class I've ever loved and consistently played even if it sits at the bottom of the DPS tier lists since forever at this point, and IMHO his playstyle is fun and engaging and his DPS could be on par with other classes with some work on the Encounter magnitudes (and some serious bug fixing of feats!)... that is until you have used all of your cooldowns and have to stick with most boring and less damaging At-Will spells of any DPS class.
The existing At-Will spells hit for so laughable of a damage that proc'ing any item that stacks with "every time you deal more than X% of you max HP in damage" is a complete nightmare. Given Encounter cooldowns I think it's not even technically possibile on single target rotation (bosses) to ever get i.e. Goristro's Horns to 10 stacks even having Daily, Artifact and Mount Power up and dropping Ray of Enfeeblement from the bar entirely to slot in a 4th burst damage Encounter.
There's no way (even in a full artifact call window where a whole Trial group stacks every possibile debuff on the boss) that any At-Will of Wizard comes even remotely close to doing any meaningful damage (let alone proc things the require X% of HP in damage) no matter how perfectly capped your offensive stats are or how high your iLVL is.
Either make the Wizard (or at least its Thaumaturge Paragon) a full blown debuffer that is intended to have less damage and to not work very well with BIS items for DPS because it benefits the rest of the party with the damage he personally loses or give him some At-Will that feels even remotely useful before even thinking about encounter magnitude and bug fixing.
Oh and... don't factor in Wizard CC when you have to decide how to divide the overall power budget into the different aspects of the class. Its "controlly" nature is what made me roll a CW in Open Beta and back then was even useful.
As of now everything that is not straight up CC-immune dies so fast that you never get to apply a single CC to anything in the game. Every single "power budget point" you spend into CCs is a wasted one that could have been spent to buff something else unless you manage to make the CCs useful again (in that regard, someone in a previous reply proposed the idea of having CC powers / Rimefire Smolder apply some enhanced form of combat adavantage that makes you deal even more damage than regular CA to that target even if it's CC-immune... that actually sounds fun and coeherent to what a Wizard is supposed to do in the first place).
Arcanist should only be lighting and arcane dmg ( we have almost zero lighting stuff)
Thaumaturge ice and fire.
Arcanist: new lighting at will (and pls for the love of god make it high enough dmg to freaking proc items like goristro...we are losing 2.5% stats compared to other classes cause we cant use it properly) and feat or class feature for arcanist cause we wouldnt have chill on it and remove Imprisonment encounter... its hotgarbage no one uses it. and make a aoe encounter instead for that slot cause our aoe sucks we have. buff a little some number on storm spell.
Thaumaturge: either make it a buff party type of deal or go for dps aswell.
If Dps: Make icy Conduit on tab to apply chill to everyone hit (that would be nice combo with shatter strike combined with icy terrain).
Smolder: its freaking terrible xDDDD. make magnitude way higher pls or make it stackable and for example at 5 stacks it will explode and deal more dmg or something or make Directed flames actually proc more often or wit hno cd at all but balance the dmg so it doesnt get overpowered.
Another nice boost would be making the crit sev bonus for the class feature "critical conflagration" be Crit Chance instead.
i have few more ideas but im lazy and i dont feel like typing more...
OR!!! you can give US (wizards) a class reroll so we can switch to hunters <.<
that would fix a lot of combat/ power chunkiness and increase dps/ effectiveness right then and there
oh and fix the encounter timers not lighting up / failing to activate / getting out of sync with the main Cw bread and butter arcane empowerment daily already !! come on dude our main daily timer does not even work properly since forever !!
id rather you fixed all the Cw bugs personally then you can "evaluate "which powers need work and are underperforming and what to focus on then dangle another "Hamster" carrot in front of our faces ..
P.S Why is there no Bard class sub forums for feedback and builds etc ..? can you get someone over there to add already for the "bard mod 21 " plz
Lightning Bolt could be simply managed to be both single and aoe skill ... only if there was an approach to the skill similar as a divided magnitude, Same as with healing spells... more targets in area of effect less damage they take ... I mean the damage is spread if more targets are hit
Imprisonment...ooooh thats a hard one... this skill does nothing... the 25% buff to other skills on mastery seems sweet... but it isnt... 50% would be a thing... but i think most of people wouldnt take it in consideration. The best example of good change was Tempest... it could be a good AOE skill like Call Lightning but with this skill shot encounter another change should occure... Malestrom of Chaos... jeeeeez i dont remember the name of this Daily... if that daily become an encounter... and if the Mealstrom would becom some serious Daily... a Chain Lightning theme... that creates a radious AoE (Opressive Force size or somethin like that) that hits everything inside with Lightning damage...
There is sooooo many ideas.... but u say to choose one
- TO MUCH STACKING!!!!! stack arcane/ stack frost/stack smolder/rimfire smolder- please... before you can "stack" yourself - TR and HR already clear all mobs while you catch your 3/10 stack of arcane mastery xD
- Stupid feats like CHAOS MAGIC: you have 5% chance on you encounter and daily power- REALLY?? 5% CHANCE????
- CW's att wil are to low magnitude + CW has no good AoE att will.
- Horribly long casting time fir example: Steal time
- CW DMG is dependable on one daily- Arcane Empowerment- it sholdn't be that way
PS. Take Aim for "Macro" Players
I think the biggest issue is the cooldowns not working properly. This happens with all powers and (apparently) classes, but is the worst on the Wizard Arcanist power Steal Time. For some reason, it suffers from this bug quadruple as much and often as other powers. It often comes off cooldown, then when you use it, it plays the sound and the animation but nothing happens. No damage, no stun. Then, the power goes on cooldown (or continues its cooldown, I don't know) for another 4 or 5 seconds. It just leaves you standing there in the middle of a group of enemies who are actively attacking you and are very much not stunned.
It doesn't just happen when you have recently used the Daily power Arcane Empowerment. It doesn't just happen when you use the 'chance to lower cooldowns by 1 second on crit' shirt. It doesn't just happen when you use an artifact while having the Artificer's Persuasion mount bonus. It just happens. Often. I think the bug is related to the old function of being able to cancel the move while it was being cast, because it would also go on cooldown for about 4 seconds if you did. (That was when the power would still apply many ticks to all enemies, so when you cancelled they would still be slowed, but not stunned or hit hard).
Really, though, you have to set some time aside to go through your ticket systems, find all the wizard power bug ones and fix them. Then see where the class is at damage wise and then balance accordingly. Changing one single power, like you did with Shard of Endless Avalanche, is not going to fix Wizard.
Speaking of Shard of Endless Avalanche, to check if all reported Wizard power bugs are properly documented in your ticketing system, you can check if there are at least 6 bugs recorded for Shard of Endless Avalanche. If there were less than 6 different issues recorded for the power, you will have to go to this forum, the bugs forums and suggestion forums for all platforms, and the old forum if you still have it, and find all the threads to write the tickets first. You can ask us to confirm if those bugs are still in the game if they were old threads. Go back in time until you are only getting duplicate issues.
_____________________________________
I also agree strongly with silverrrrrrr: I have made several new toons in light of the new Mod and Neverembers Incentive and wizard early levels are AWFUL. You start out with two, later three, SINGLE TARGET powers and you have to do the entirety of Neverdeath with it. I don't even know by now if that's true anymore, but it sucked at least all through Tower District just before Mod21 hit. Keeping the zombies off of Makos in the tutorial was crazy difficult. The magnitudes of these single target powers are also way lower than on other classes, and early game you don't have your feats yet to help you deal damage. I haven't seen a single class with single target magnitudes even close to the 500 Entangling Force and Repel have. My new Rogue's first single target power is 715 magnitude. Once you unlock Icy Terrain you have more AOE (you can also put repel before, but keep in mind that power also pushes enemies far away!) - but you can't really use Repel anymore because it will push mobs off of the icy terrain, so at that point there are still only three useful encounter powers.
Please, whatever you do, keep in mind this very important thing: make sure you have a board of different types of players and testers. Get people who know how the tutorial and early levels are supposed to feel (also on other classes) to try that out. Get people playing the later levels, both paragon paths. Get casual level 20 players. And get very end-game-top-of-damage-chart-TOMM/ZCM/VoShc players to give feedback. Then listen mostly to the early levels feedback and the very-end-game-players. The first because that means people will actually start playing wizard and not be put off by an awful early experience. The last because they know the class best, since they've been able to figure out how to maximize their damage output.
What doesn’t need fixed.
The control aspect is gone
Do with that what you will.
As for an encounter power
Steal Time. Animation is cool but looong, And it gets interrupted constantly rendering it useless and the encounter recharge is redonk.
At wills, storm pillar
No damage to really proc anything other than AP gain.
I would get the scuba gear ready lol. You have uncorked the damn!
and i can guarantee we are way weaker than hr tr and warlocks at least
I understand this may cause unbalance in PVP, to which I suggest either more sources of control resist available to players, or for the duration against players to be drastically reduced.
Also, the damage CW can actually output is far from being at the top of the scoreboards in a good trial group, regardless if it's TOMM or Zariel.
I probably know at the moment just 2 or 3 CW which can keep up with some TRs in good groups, and I run with lots of people, so it's not a partial picture of the situation.
My area of expertise is PVP.
PVP Wizard Info & Adjustment Suggestions:
Basics on how good PVP wizard is:
- Wizard currently is one of only 2 classes that are considered essential for making a PVP team for anything competitive, such as community run tournaments. The other one is bard. Having 1 healer is important too but doesn't have to be a specific class for that.
- Wizard when PVP seasons were still a thing was the easiest class to get onto the first page of the leaderboard, there were literally 8 through 10 wizards on first page for the entire duration of the final PVP season, out of the 20 characters on first page.
- Wizard currently is every bit as powerful as it was during the final PVP season, I do pretty much all of the matchmaking for private que 5vs5s on PC right now and I run all of the PVP solo que community events on PC as well. Wizard has the greatest impact on match outcomes out of all the classes.
Overall Class Rankings For PVP:
DPS class order from greatest to least overall is this:
Fighter > Wizard > Ranger & DPS Cleric > DPS Warlock > Rogue & Barbarian
For healers its:
Cleric > Skilled Warlock > Most Healer warlocks & Paladin
A Note On Bard:
Bard's exact placement hasn't been found yet, but we know its really strong.
Basics On How I Have Managed To Matchmake PVP Wizard In Private 5vs5s:
- 1 Wizard can be pitted against 1 healer on the opposite team, provided there is only 1 wizard and 1 healer in the whole que group.
- 1 wizard can also be matchmaked vs another similarly built wizard. This doesn't work if the 2 wizards have huge gear gaps between them or one is super squishy and the other is really tanky.
- 1 wizard can be added to a significantly weaker team than the opposing team and singlehandedly balance it out in many cases, it depends on how extreme the difference in teams is though.
- In general, wizard is hard to balance if you don't have an even number of them, and makes PVP conditions unpleasant/not very fun when there are 2 on each team.
The cause of wizard being op in PVP:
The reason why wizard is OP in PVP right now is due to a combination of the repel encounter power, the recently increased distance of that repel (that distance increase may be from control bonus), and the new arcane tempest encounter power (the one that prones people and has a short cooldown).
Adjustment Suggestion For The Encounter Power Arcane Tempest:
Wizard's power arcane tempest must be nerfed in PVP, the cooldown for it is way too short and the duration of its prone lasts 3 seconds. This alone is what made them go from being good to being broken OP. This is the biggest reason why there were 10 of them on the first page during the final PVP season. Wizard also has repel and combining the new prone power with repel was simply too much.
PVP Rogue,
--[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin)
Ingame Handle: trgluestickz
Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563
Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression
Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud
Platform: PC
Maybe this can be done by adding Knockdown to the things that Control Mastery increases? If it was 1,2 seconds in PVP, would that be allright? With the influence of Control Mastery this would remain at 3 seconds for PVE.
According to D&D 5e (yes, I know the Neverwinter is not exactly 5e, but...) Both Fireball and Lightning Bolt have similar ranges and identical damage amounts. Our version, as show rather lacks on damage and range.
Suggestion: The damage magnitude should be matched. Fireball has an 80' range and 5' radius. Lightning Bolt 'could' have an 80' range and maybe arc 5 times. Or, more like 5e: 80' range and 5' wide. (better choice prolly)
Spell Mastery and cooldown for Lightning Bolt could match Fireball.
I also don't think it has a 30' length. I think it has a 5' length. It might be more bugged than I thought...
Keep in Mind that Fireball has a 15' radius, so a 30' diameter, and can be cast at a distance of 80'. For your suggestion to make them equal, it would make more sense for Lightning Bolt to indeed have a length of 30'. Maybe it is already supposed to, and it just doesn't because it's bugged. I don't know. The tooltip for Shield is not at all what the power is currently doing anymore, either, they would have to look into their internal design documents to see what Lightning Bolt and Shield are even supposed to do and fix them so they actually do that.
I hate that our class is entirely dependent on AP gain.
The problem with Arcane Empowerment is it inflates the wizards burst damage quite a bit more in ST than AOE. This burst damage in trials and boss fights can make wizards appear stronger than they actually are. This has led to wizards being "balanced" based on that damage. This "balancing" reduced DPS across the board even in the thaumaturge path that no one used because it was already inferior. It was blanket nerfing of the entire class and both paragons, increasing cooldowns and reducing magnitudes across the board without focusing on why and where the adjustments were needed. This has left the wizard in a truly sad point in AOE and merely mediocre in ST.
There are however some exceptional players who can make a lesser class seem more powerful than it actually is for the average player, but this would be true for any class these players chose to play. Do not punish all wizards by balancing based on the DPS of these specific players who focus their lives solely on the game.
I've been with this game since March 22, 2013 and have played only a wizard. I have seen the highs and lows. Wizards have been directly or indirectly nerfed over a dozen times since mod 5 and I'm to the point now that I don't care anymore. I'm not even sure why I wrote this. We are only buffed until the next nerf. I feel there is no point.
PVP Rogue,
--[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin)
Ingame Handle: trgluestickz
Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563
Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression
Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud
Platform: PC
There are two issue here in my humble opinion: first, most endgame bosses are immune to control, and second, boosting only your own arcane damage makes this much worse than Ray of Enfeeblement, which does both damage and lower the target's offense (and ranged/magic defense in the Arcane Mastery slot). Not to forget, this is the last encounter power Wizard Arcanists get, so it should have some kind of "oomph" rather than be a glorified, damage-less entangling force.
Seeing that the spell's main theme is chains, one way to fix it could be to have it lower the target's movement speed by a % for 6 seconds, whether the Hold effect works or not; that % could be linked to the control stats of the caster. I personally think that a 20%-50% movement speed down would be nice, but I believe adequate testing should be done for balance purpose.
Another way to fix it would be to make the damage boost from the spells affect all players, not just the wizard; that would raise the utility of the wizard, even if not raising his dps directly.