Suggestions for wizard class modificationS, the place to publish your essays !

bifflinculte · August 2021

I posted many ideas in Noworries thread, but he deleted them.

So i'll post them here. Feel free to comment and to put your suggestionS.

The wizard class needs much more than the replacement of a single power!!!

At-wills:
- 2 single targets and 2 aoe at-wills, as for every dd class (st,aoe,st,aoe).
- Scorching Burst and Storm Pillar are badly designed
- Arcane bolt is useless and too similar with mm
- cc (aoe) should be common to both paragons, rof specific to thaumaturge

Encounters
- too much arcane controlling spells
- I’m always surprised than Repel has the highest st dps, although it’s a controlling spell. Non-controlling st spells like disintegration and ftf should have higher dps.

Encounters, arcanist
- imprisonment is useless.
- Arcane tempest should deal higher damage on the main target, to make it decent in 1v1 fights.
- lightning bolt: bugged, bad aiming, should work as cleric's Searing Javelin (single target aiming, all enemies in a line are stroke).
- Arcanist should have 1 more lightning (st) spell, instead of imprisonment.

Encounters, thaumaturge
- ftf: magnitude is very low and should be reworked as st damage with aoe utility abilities. The main target gets high magnitude dot. The nearby mobs don't get direct damage, but they get affected by smolder, which deals aoe damage for several seconds. After this time, if smolder is refreshed, it is no longer aoe.
- Thaumaturge should have 1 more fire encounter instead of a cold spell. For example d&d flame arrows instead of icy rays, with same mechanic: you aim 2 separate targets or twice a single one. On mastery, ability to aim a 3rd target. This would make 3 fire + 3 cold spells and would open fire/cold synergy mechanics.
- Modification of all st spells that become oae on mastey (repel, chill strike): on mastery, the main target also gets the big st hit and only nearby foes get the aoe damage.
- Fireball on mastery aoe again, with d&d Delayed Fireball mechanic: it works as a trap, triggers when enemies nearby, higher damage and greater radius.
- Coi should add chill at every tick. Main target should take more damage than nearby enemies. On mastery, greater radius.

bifflinculte · August 2021

Dailies
- too much aoe spells, only one st (ice knife)
- arcane empowerment has a bad design, is bugged (cd always jumping) and is too powerful (while the rest of the st arcanist is too weak). The idea of damage buff is good, but I would buff all arcane spells (at-will and encounters). The cd reduction idea is also good, but presently it’s a mess. Using an arcane encounter should reduce all encounters cd by x seconds.
- Maelstrom of Chaos is bad, it should be replaced by chain lightning
- Ice storm is bad, it should be replaced by a fire st spell or short range aoe, for example the Comet spell

Class features
- Orb of imposition is useless, wizards have already too much control
- Chilling presence should be specific to thaumaturge and should allow him to freeze foes (making freeze specific to thaumaturge, replacing frost wave). Damage buff is too low.
- Arcane presence should be specific to arcanist, as arcane stacks should be.
- A class feature should enhance st damage but also reduce aoe damage.

Class features, arcanist
- Eye of the Storm is useless
- Storm spell should no longer be an obvious choice; only lightning spells should proc extra damage and with 100% chance. Consequently, the arcanist needs more lightning spells (1-2 at-wills, 2-3 encounters, 1 daily aka chain lightning). Presently, this passive promotes dot builds, I think the thaumaturge should be the dot specialist thanks to the smolder mechanics.

Class features, thaumaturge
- The 3 fire related class features need rework.
o Critical conflagration is too powerful. It should still add smolder on every critical hit but also reduce the magnitude smolder/rimefire
o Swath of destruction should only grant higher incoming damage on foes affected by smolder (party buff).
o Combustive Action should buff the smolder/rimefire damage (personal)
- Frost wave is useless. Should be replaced by Chilling presence as mentioned before.

bifflinculte · August 2021

Feats, arcanist
- alacrity: cd reduction is too little
- Assailing Force: does it work as intented?
- Snap freeze looks like a thaumaturge feat
- Chaos magic should be even more chaotic
- A Step Above Mastery should really reward the maximal arcane stacking. This feat itself is good, but the arcane stack mechanic should grant higher arcane buff.
- Elemental Reinforcement: I don’t like this version, it should work as before mod 16, using a kind of magic (arcane, cold, lightning) grants a 5% damage buff, up to 15% (or 4% up to 12%).

Feats, thaumaturge
- Smoldering Recovery and Relative Haste are ok, even if the AP gain from Smoldering Recovery is a bit low (smolder dot should be faster anyway)

- glowing flames should be removed, replaced by the ftf encounter I described earlier which already gives an aoe ability to smolder.
- Icy veins is useful, but the thaumaturge has so many ways to add chill already. And adding frost with fire spell seems weird to me.
- These 2 feats should be replaced by a pair, opposing a cold/fire rotation gameplay with a single element gameplay:
o rimefire focus: rimefire deals more damage than smolder, but it’s sujected to an equilibrium between fire and cold spells. If 2 fire encounters are casted in a row, rimefire is converted to regular smolder. If 2 cold encounters are casted in a row, it’s converted to a chill stack. Consequently, single cast of a cold encounter doesn’t add chill anymore.
o elemental focus: casting a spell of one element (fire or cold) will reduce the cd of all encounters of the same element (for ex, 0.25 sec for at-will, 2 sec for encounter and 5 sec for daily).

- Shatter Strike is great, but magnitude could be higher, it hasn’t been scaled as encounters were.
- Chilling Advantage is actually a malus. This feat should be as good as the awesome Shatter Strike feat and related to the fire. For example, a crescendo fire damage buff everytime a fire spell is used (using a cold spell could also reduce or anhililate this buff, hence favorizing fire spells).

- Critical Burn would be any good if smolder had reasonable dps.
- Frigid Winds is a repetition of chilling presence but is at least useful, like every overall damage buff. It could be replaced by an enhancement of the chilling presence class feature.

- Directed Flames reduces the average dps of smolder, which is already peanuts. This feat should work as in mod 16, smolder is no longer dot but procs everytime you add smolder or rimefire. Magnitude is the same as a single tick of regular smolder.
- Rimefire Weaving isn’t bad but needs more subtility. It should grant a good damage buff only if you alternate fire and cold encounter spells. This buff could be crescendo, each fire/cold rotation would grant a stack until 3 or 4 are reached.
This feat would be the best choice for long fights, whereas Directed Flames would be better in short fights.

bifflinculte · August 2021

Mechanics, arcanist
- arcane stacks should be specific to arcanist and grant higher buff on arcane spells. The thaumaturge is presently not able to keep them up.

Mechanics, thaumaturge
- base smolder/rimefire mecanic is good
- smolder is too weak, the dot of 3 sec is too long. It should be 1.5 sec. Magnitude has to be adjusted, granting a dps around 10-15%. With a build (feats, class features) based on smolder dps, it should be the double.
- rimefire should be personal. Presently any wizard, even arcanist, who adds chill on a foe affected by smolder will deal rimefire damage.

bifflinculte · August 2021

And generally, for all classes, pure combat powers without side effects should always have higher magnitude than powers with control, buff, debuff effects.

armadeonx · August 2021

bifflinculte said:
And generally, for all classes, pure combat powers without side effects should always have higher magnitude than powers with control, buff, debuff effects.

I would say "except where there is an appropriate extra cast time or cooldown to offset the difference"

malakut · August 2021

bifflinculte said:
I posted many ideas in Noworries thread, but he deleted them.

Don't worry, a huge majority of my comments on that thread have been deleted as well. I've only been trying to do nothing but help folks but I can see that that's not how they interpret it. :P

bifflinculte · August 2021

rjc9000 · September 2021

I think everyone has their own ideas for what they'd like in Wizard, but here is a list of issues that I think that any power/mechanics changes should address for PvE play:

Need to update the overall design from its Control Wizard roots.
TLDR: By far the biggest and worst problem I see is that the class is still pretending it is Proc Wizard that controls enemies and hides behind a tank class, rather than being updated for how post Mod 16 is played.

If you look at how many Control Wizard powers were designed (all the At-wills, Entangling Force, Conduit of Ice, Icy Terrain, old Steal Time, etc), they were designed to be low damage, multihit attacks. These powers usually have long and overly drawn out animations that make you vulnerable while casting.

For the large number of small damage, multihit attacks, this was because CW was always Proc Wizard: your damage came from fishing for procs, rather than the actual damage of the powers. This worked (just) okay under the pre-Mod 16's feat trees, where you would eventually pick up many feats/passives that would add procs of damage. It wasn't (as) bad that your powers were weaksauce, if it triggered 5 procs of damage on hit.

But this doesn't work in Mod 16's system where the feat trees were dissolved and procs were removed. So now, you have a class with multiple small hits of no damage ... and very little to no procs of damage to supplement the low base damage. Oops.

For the long animation times, this was because, in classic NW (ie, Mod 0), the Control Wizard was trying to mimic the 4e D&D controller role ... where you'd thin out mobs/hold them at bay, while a defender (tank) class was supposed to keep enemies from pouncing on you.

In a post Mod 16 NW, that no longer works when AoE fights are about getting off your damage quickly and packs enemies have attacks that chain stun you. Long casting times are a liability now.
Mechanics that *matter*.
TLDR: Right now, the class mechanics act as if they're important (*laughs in changes to Magic Missile*), but they really just add tiny numerical damage buffs that run in the background. These "mechanics" ultimately do not change how you play because the buff is so unnoticeable.

If a class mechanic exists, it should be relevant to play beyond a stacking damage buff that runs in the background, such as consuming Arcane/Chill stacks for damage or consuming a proc for cooldown resets.

If the mechanic rewards a damage buff, I would hope the buffs become higher effort to get, but also grant higher bonuses (say 15-20%) rather than being low effort, tiny damage buffs that run in the background.

Arcane Stacks passively grant a stacking damage 0.5% buff per Arcane stack that runs in the background. A final tier Arcanist feat makes this buff ... 1% per stack. The tooltip acts as if having more Arcane stacks drastically modifies encounters ... but most of the time, you just get a few miliseconds of extra stuns. The only relevant example of Arcane stacks modifying powers is Entangling Force, which adds extra hits of damage to its DoT depending on your stack count (+1 hit if 5-9 Arcane stacks, +2 hits if 10 stacks).

Smolder is another example, which the game acts as if Smolder is so important. But it just is some pathetic poke of damage that only is used to proc self buffs that run in the background.

Chill Stacks were important in the old days when crowd control was needed. But in today's version of NW, enemies die so quickly that you are better off just killing enemies outright rather than patiently stacking 6 Chill stacks and a freeze power. In addition, Chill itself is useless on boss fights due to everything being CC immune, rendering it as a stackable damage buff (with Chilling Presence) or something you use for procs (Snap Freeze)
Distinct power uses in the powerset
TLDR: People are ultimately going to choose what has the best numbers for damage, unless the powers do something distinct and useful within the game.
There are a lot of powers that tend to be different variations of "power that hits single target" and "power that hits in an AoE", sometimes variations of "has a CC effect/doesn't have a CC effect" as supposed distinguishing features, but these aren't enough if people are ultimately going to pick what has the best numbers.

Then there are the powers/passives/class features that are just strange (ex Storm Fury), had been nerfed too much (ex: Shield), or have their power vastly overestimated (ex: Lightning Bolt's stacks refresh, Fanning the Flames in general, or Maelstrom of Chaos).

For these strange, overnerfed, or overestimated powers, they should be revised to go back and do something USEFUL for you, rather than act as bloat to fill out the power selection.
Something that addresses cooldowns
TL;DR: The class was originally designed with cooldown resets (like old Spell Twisting) and the Recovery stat in mind, to offset your long cooldowns. With Mod 16, Recovery and cooldown resets were taken out, but not the long cooldowns.

While Wizard could get lowered base cooldowns, it would make Wizard more powerful numerically, but do nothing to distinguish it from any other class. I would find it more interesting if Wizard had to play around their feats/mechanics to get cooldown resets.
Reducing dependence on Arcane Empowerment
TL;DR: This daily overcentralizes Arcanist. It is why Arcanist base damage is so low, for developer fear of players overwhelming enemies with sheer numbers.

Something must be changed with this daily, otherwise the Arcanist subclass devolves into "Arcane Empowerment + apply face to keyboard, the subclass".

Imagine you gave a class like Barbarian or Fighter Arcane Empowerment.
The ability to spam multiple ~1000+ magnitude encounters would probably break the game by sheer volume of numbers.

This is the scenario that is running through the developers' heads when thinking about Arcanist, which is why Arcanist base damage is so low: Arcane Empowerment will let players spam a bunch of low base damage encounters, a death of a thousand cuts.

But this also has the curse of making Wizard very weak outside of Arcane Empowerment, since outside of your godmode daily, you're left with low base damage encounters (amongst other reasons listed such as overestimated mechanics).

I would rather see Arcane Empowerment get scrapped and Wizard in general given a total overhaul, but given how the most recent changes to Steal Time worked out, I am not sure that's a great idea...

bifflinculte · September 2021

@rjc9000 I agree on everything.

You often points out that mechanics and gameplay that worked good before mod 16, were uncompatible with the big class overhaul philosphy, I think this is the main issue. The cw was cut in 2, resulting in 2 flavorless paths, both with different spells but same gameplay. Cast encounters, then at-wills until cooldowns are over.

Only Arcane empowerment brings some variety in gameplay, but not for the bast, since i'm not a great fan of key spamming and
as you said, st arcanist is too dependent on this daily.

Continuous babystep modifications of the wizard can't make a good class, the problem isn't only this or that power having too little dps or too long cd, both wizards paths lack of coherence and thus things have to be overhauled much deeper.

The arcanist should rely much more on arcane stacks, not only for self dps buff but also for cd reduction system, or the trigger of random events... It also should rely a little less on storm spell...

Same for the thaumaturge, smolder should be the base for a specific gameplay. Cold/fire spell rotation mechanic seems to me obvious as well (this would imply having as much fire as cold powers).

I'm aware that a deep overhaul would require a lot of time, but when you put together all the time spend on countless micro-changes, better invest in the wizard class for good. This will bring many disappointed wizards back to game.

bifflinculte · September 2021

The cast time reduction of Fireball and Steal time are much welcome, the wizard was very slow for aoe trash. But the result is a bit odd for Steal Time. The animation used to last 2-3 seconds, now it's about 1 with the same visual, giving the impression that the toon is sneezing.

The replacement of Imprisonment for Arcane Conduit is also a good change, but the chains on icon and animation don't really fit with the new spell.

A 100% boost of smolder looks huge on paper, but in reality, this makes an overall dps boost of 1% (smolder damage fraction used to be 1%, now it's the double, so 2%).

Both thauma useless feats, chilling advantage (cold damage triggers smolder) and directed flames (put 12 sec cd on smolder), works now together. The time of fixing these feats should have been used for modifing them.

And what about Lightning bolt? The doesn't work half of time, and there is no aiming.
And Fanning the flame? The magnitude is so low, 100 for a st spell is odd.
These 2 spells worked well before mod 16 and were good balanced. Why did they get overhauled?

silente07 · June 2022

Bump

stryker80 · June 2022

A suggestion for Icy Terrain: Enemies affected by your icy terrain receive CA damage (even if just from you). Also, maybe increase the radius a tad.

bifflinculte · June 2022

stryker80#0653 said:
A suggestion for Icy Terrain: Enemies affected by your icy terrain receive CA damage (even if just from you). Also, maybe increase the radius a tad.

Agree with bigger radius but not with CA from terrain. Nevertheless, it would be logical that frozen foes get automatic CA, from all sources.

gankdalf · June 2022

wrong thread

olocancom · June 2022

bifflinculte said:
@rjc9000 I agree on everything.

You often points out that mechanics and gameplay that worked good before mod 16, were uncompatible with the big class overhaul philosphy, I think this is the main issue. The cw was cut in 2, resulting in 2 flavorless paths, both with different spells but same gameplay. Cast encounters, then at-wills until cooldowns are over.
...

Continuous babystep modifications of the wizard can't make a good class, the problem isn't only this or that power having too little dps or too long cd, both wizards paths lack of coherence and thus things have to be overhauled much deeper.
...

I'm aware that a deep overhaul would require a lot of time, but when you put together all the time spend on countless micro-changes, better invest in the wizard class for good. This will bring many disappointed wizards back to game.

Wizard really does need a full rework instead of just buffs and tweaks. I'll accept buffs and tweaks if they're good. But a new and improved wizard would be awesome.

arcanjo86 · June 2022

we had 3 feat trees on wizard in the past : Controller, thaumathurge and renegade, they could have made 3 wizard class paragons, the controller would be arcane powers + cold powers, the thaum arcane powers+fire powers and renegade would be arcane powers+lightning powers, the arcane powers should be spread between lvl1 and 20 as wizard core powers and not locked until before player picks the class paragon

Suggestions for wizard class modificationS, the place to publish your essays !

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