It is not the devs job to find the next best build and rotation.
If you look at the script and do not see enough to smile about , it is on you. I am happy with the changes in ST and in AoE and I do not need to test anything to know my future build already, the benefit is that obvious.
It is not the devs job to find the next best build and rotation.
If you look at the script and do not see enough to smile about , it is on you. I am happy with the changes in ST and in AoE and I do not need to test anything to know my future build already, the benefit is that obvious.
If there's a new build out there with noticeably more output I'm more than happy to ditch the current meta and playstyle. However given @rgutscheradev's comments that the current top build is "on par", which is definitely not the case, makes me feel less enthusiastic about what the devs are trying to achieve with this rework.
I did not said that it is a build with noticeably more dmg output .
I said- enough to smile about.
A bit of help in aoe. Not enough to close the gap, but enough to smile about. In ST we got more sustain damage, and a playing field that is fair.
We never received so much work and attention. But -noticeably more output -no, is not the case. .
Dunno. Feels like it's a wasted opportunity then. I retired my Wizard a while ago because I had trouble getting into groups even with BoA. Now reading that all is fine and dandy makes me cringe, especially coming from a dev. I agree that bis Wizards with BoA where somewhat viable, but never top-end competitive. It wasn't enough of a gap to deliberately exclude them from groups, but you know how zone chat works. There was a bit of a revival with ranged in demand for dragons, but since BoA is now gone I'm seeing that trend reverted.
I advertise with my TR and Warlock and get into groups instantly. Maybe it has more to do with player expectations and wrong assumptions, but whatever the issue it doesn't help the class either way. I personally think too many Wizards struggle in the 60k - 70k range to put out reasonable damage where other classes have a much more linear progression thanks to higher power magnitudes. I'm a little bit frustrated that this isn't acknowledged and changed.
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darthpotaterMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,259Arc User
Well I did spect not only changes to magnitudes or numbers but also changes to some powers for example Lightning bolt for something like Chain Lightning (targeted spell with jumps) to make AoE more fluid and more front damage fast like other classes and not the slow buggy lighning bolt.
Also I spected changes in feats to alow new playstyles, options to gain recharge speed, etc. As I see now, they will make thaumaturge viable and spellstorm a bit better in aoe. Not enough for me for that long wait, and we know when this is finished you wont look at wizards in 5 years or more.
You can buff shield, Maelstrom and other HAMSTER powers what you want, they will be useless.
I think the nerf to Arcane Empowerment was neccesary mainly because of the lag / CD issues cant be fixed for everyone due to lag / ping but you need to compensate that with the single target powers dmg we use during AE. Or extend the duration 2-3 seconds.
The TL;DR of it all is Arcanist is getting AOE buffed, some bugs fixed (slight DPS improvements), and their flagship daily nerfed slightly. I do suspect that slowing down the recharge is to avoid a limitation of the engine that causes phantom cooldowns. If that's the case then buff the damage bonus to compensate, especially if they were good where they were.
On the Thaum side it's just buffs across the board, and Smolder will no longer be a pile of HAMSTER; I'm anxious to test if Ray of Frost + Directed Flames is going to be a return to the glory days of freeze-burning your enemies to snowy ash. Even Fanning the Flames might not be garbage. As soon as this hits Test I'll be over the parsing and comparing.
The top Wizard builds (which basically means the Arcane Empowerment build) are doing quite well -- competitive with the other top dps builds. We're certainly not seeing them at 30-40% below everyone else across the board.
What makes you think you have ever encountered a top dps player? Are we going to pretend your ccp friends get invited to good groups? A fresh level 20 looks strong next to them...
> The top Wizard builds (which basically means the Arcane Empowerment build) are doing quite well -- competitive with the other top dps builds. We're certainly not seeing them at 30-40% below everyone else across the board.
~20%-25% on ru server (our players are stronger than in the euro), its a lot
Wonder whether @rgutscheradev might be willing to get a little more specific as to what data they're looking at, because it's too vague of a statement really.
I'm hearing this said a lot, but we're not seeing it in our data.
The top Wizard builds (which basically means the Arcane Empowerment build) are doing quite well -- competitive with the other top dps builds. We're certainly not seeing them at 30-40% below everyone else across the board.
That said, I do want to take a closer look, and to get another data pull from when the Band of Air changes have sunk in (that hurts more than just Wizard, of course, but Wizard is definitely one of the classes that can use Band of Air effectively).
If you look at your data, you will see that a nerf to Spell Storm is clearly not in order. This nerf only serves to LOWER the dps of end game wizards. Overall, these changes are unwanted, as they do not fix any of the long standing CW bugs, and only reduce any real players dps. Making changes to stuff people don't use, in hope that they may use it, really doesn't help the current situation. I've spoken with other end game CWs that all seem to agree on this. I'd love to see some meaningful fixes to CW, and possibly some boosts to some areas, but this is not it.
I'll also add, as someone that plays all classes, it is MUCH easier to do decent dps on most other dps classes than CW with similar gear. Last thing I want to see is a further reduction in dps (which these changes rally amount to with the Spell Storm nerf).
I strongly urge the development team to take another look at wizard, and talk with some of us that know the class before pushing out these changes. I do play many versions of CW too, having 10 loadouts on my main, Talia. Overall, this is a very disappointing set of proposed changes.
The devs have demonstrated a willingness to listen to the player base and integrate much needed changes, most recently and most specifically with the Bard.
My suggestion for your consideration, especially those less excited about the Wizard changes here, is to wait until the patch hits Preview to test. Once tested, it will be helpful to provide objective feedback.
We experienced a process with the Bard changes where a patch went to Preview and further adjustments were made afterwards.
If you’re as passionate as I think you are, please be supportive.
> @darthpotater said: > Well I did spect not only changes to magnitudes or numbers but also changes to some powers for example Lightning bolt for something like Chain Lightning (targeted spell with jumps) to make AoE more fluid and more front damage fast like other classes and not the slow buggy lighning bolt. > > Also I spected changes in feats to alow new playstyles, options to gain recharge speed, etc. As I see now, they will make thaumaturge viable and spellstorm a bit better in aoe. Not enough for me for that long wait, and we know when this is finished you wont look at wizards in 5 years or more. > > You can buff shield, Maelstrom and other <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> powers what you want, they will be useless. > > I think the nerf to Arcane Empowerment was neccesary mainly because of the lag / CD issues cant be fixed for everyone due to lag / ping but you need to compensate that with the single target powers dmg we use during AE. Or extend the duration 2-3 seconds. > > I hope you still have more in the room
> @sageone#7098 said: > i would ask if the cw can be reviewed again and to have the following changes implemented: > > Ray of frost magnitude increased from 55 to 60 > > Scorching Burst magnitude increased from 30-80 to 45-80 > > Chill Strike Spell mastery magnitude increased from 225 to 325 > > Shatter Strike: Powers with control effects now deal 250 magnitude (up from 150) against CC immune targets > > Lightning Bolt Encounter: Remove it altogether or change the animation and targeting to guarantee it hits > > Entangling Force: In Spell Mastery change it so it grants an additional attack where you can slam the enemy into the ground after raising them in the air. > > Icey Terrain: reduce cooldown by 3 seconds > > Ice Storm: Instead of the knockback effect have it freeze all enemies within its radius for 4 seconds for 650 magnitude and for cc immune targets let it do 750 > > Maelstrom of Chaos: Reduce the animation time and increase the area of effect. Currently the animation time is so long that by the time it hits the enemies have already moved from the location. > > Imprisonment was disliked only because it didnt do any damage. All you had to do was add damage to the power and it would have been acceptable. Give us back Imprisonment as an aoe with 325 magnitude and Spell Mastery makes it ST 450 magnitude with the arcane conduit effect. > > Also keep in mind that all the other classes have multiple encounters that hit for more than 500 magnitude and arcanist and thaum both barely have any. I think between the 2 paths they have 2 encounter power that are over 500 and for one of them that is only in Spell mastery slot > > None of these are big changes except for Ice Storm and Imprisonment but i believe they would go a long way in making players a little bit happier with the cw.
Entangling Force - Star Wars telekinetic smash, yes please! 🙏
I did some tests on the ST and the first impression is bad. The thaum is weaker than the arcanist who has had his dps reduced at the same time. 6 months to obtain such changes, which concern adjustments of magnitude and cd only, we could really have hoped for better. We get a large list of changes that masks the weakness of their impact. The objectives seemed clear to me, however, to improve the aoe of the cw in a substantial way and the ST in a more limited way. For the ST we have the opposite.
I did some tests on the ST and the first impression is bad. The thaum is weaker than the arcanist who has had his dps reduced at the same time. 6 months to obtain such changes, which concern adjustments of magnitude and cd only, we could really have hoped for better. We get a large list of changes that masks the weakness of their impact. The objectives seemed clear to me, however, to improve the aoe of the cw in a substantial way and the ST in a more limited way. For the ST we have the opposite.
Tenebrae
Did you test in preview?
"The more I care for life, the more everything around me dies."
The changes will probably hit preview on Friday. I mean yeah currently you'll see less output simply due to Storm Spell changes. Not much to test though.
I did some tests on the ST and the first impression is bad. The thaum is weaker than the arcanist who has had his dps reduced at the same time. 6 months to obtain such changes, which concern adjustments of magnitude and cd only, we could really have hoped for better. We get a large list of changes that masks the weakness of their impact. The objectives seemed clear to me, however, to improve the aoe of the cw in a substantial way and the ST in a more limited way. For the ST we have the opposite.
Controlled Momentum Class Skill After using a Control Encounter power allies within 30' of you deal 2% more damage for 6 seconds. This effect does not stack.
- Please, can we delete this class skill? Plain delete. Why do I have a class skill that does not benefit me at all? Nobody knows that we are buffing them. Nobody cares that we are buffing them. And to say the truth- I do not want to buff anybody by default. Buffing others should be a choice, not mandatory, on a wizard. .
There is no buffing wizard in d&d. There are buffing spells, but it is a cutting choice if it is worth to use a spell slot, and usually it is not. That skill is a vestige of premod 16 skillttree and unfit for current gameplay. Even back then it was a CHOICE if one would take this feat for Master of Flame buffing build. .
There is no buffing wizard in d&d. There are buffing spells, but it is a cutting choice if it is worth to use a spell slot, and usually it is not. That skill is a vestige of premod 16 skillttree and unfit for current gameplay. Even back then it was a CHOICE if one would take this feat for Master of Flame buffing build. .
A buffing controller as mentioned is interesting (and I don't care about D&D lore), especially since I think two competing DPS paragons aren't ideal. We once had a buffing meta and in case a buffer is able to up party damage by 20% such a spec becomes very viable in trial content.
Now there are 7! , SEVEN support classes with different buffing abilities.
If my role is dps, to deal damage, my Class Skill should help me to deal damage. Why am I mandatory buffing the other dps to deal more damage than me? Because I like to be passed on party and raid invites?
The changes will probably hit preview on Friday. I mean yeah currently you'll see less output simply due to Storm Spell changes. Not much to test though.
A quick glance at an ACT log from earlier in this week on preview showed a 50% crit rate for Storm Spell, and roughly half the damage on a non-crit vs a crit. Assuming it was (the equivalent of) 100% crit rate to this point, it would be around a 25% damage reduction from it. Not massive in the grand scheme, but 1-2% overall dps loss needs making up somewhere else.
The changes will probably hit preview on Friday. I mean yeah currently you'll see less output simply due to Storm Spell changes. Not much to test though.
It was first impression not definitive, i"ll wait for complete implementation to give me an opinion.
@rgutscheradev Ray of Enfeeblement and Arcane conduit are the essentially the same thing. Before we had Arcane Conduit we had Imprisonment and the only reason players didnt use it was because it didnt do any damage. When the players asked for you guys to add damage to it you decided to replace it with Arcane Conduit which is not what the players asked for. PLEASE give us back Imprisonment (chains enemies in place for 3 seconds) and simply add some damage to it (250-300 mag) and when it is in Mastery have it change to ST with more damage.
@rgutscheradev Also there are quite a few enemies that have very cool lightning attacks like in Vollusk and DBV. Maybe taking one of their animations and tweaking them a bit would work better for the Lightning Bolt Encounter. Or maybe the Clerics burning arrows and just change them blue and white.
Ok, lots of strong feelings about Arcane Empowerment, understandably so.
Let me try to explain my thinking. Lots of details involved, so hang on, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
First, the balance issues (second will be UI issues and the infamous "cooldown bug").
AE is pretty different from other powers, so it's a bit hard to figure out. In the end, I looked at it like this: * When you cast AE (old version), you'll get to cast about 10 Encounters. ** 10 is an approximation. It will vary by build, of course. And you have to be aware of stuff like "8 Encounters with AE, and then all 4 Encounters have 1s left" might be similar to "10 Encounters, w/ 2 on full cooldown and 2 on medium-low". * Suppose each of those Encounters has (on average) 500 Mag. You're getting a total of 5500 Mag out of your AE, over 10 seconds (due to 10% bonus). (Actually probably more like 5300 for weird math reasons I won't go into here.) * If you cast Ice Knife, you just do 1800 Mag. Let's use new Ice Knife at 2000 Mag, because it would be silly to balance AE against older weaker powers. * However, Ice Knife is fast. If you cast Ice Knife, you still have the rest of your 10s. In that time, you can cast 4 Encounters. * So really AE is giving you +6 Encounters over what you'd normally do. That's ~3000 Mag of damage. Still a LOT more than other encounters. * If AE gave you +4 Encounters rather than +6, that seems about right. That's ~2000 Mag of damage, comparable to other Dailies. * Changing the recharge bonus from x5 to x3 roughly gave me 8 encounters during my AE cast (instead of 10). So that's how I tuned it.
The above are the basics. A few more points: * x5 to x3 maybe sounds like more than it is. (Note the 10 --> 8 effect at the end.) That's because, for a 15s CD power, increasing your CD speed by x5 takes it from 15s CD to 3s CD. You saved 12s. But at x3 speed, you go from 15s to 5s. You save 10s. Saving 12s is definitely better than saving 10s. But not by as much as you might think just looking at the initial numbers. * Because AE is doing damage based on your other spells, it's hard to balance things just by bringing other stuff up. A lot of the encounters (including all but 1 of the Arcanist's) had their Mags go up, typically by decent amounts (~25%), and so w/o touching AE directly, it's hard to keep it in line. * Having the CD speed so high makes the cooldown bug worse (see next post). * If AE still seems weak compared to other daily choices, tweaking the % damage bonus is an easy way to boost it a bit. I could also get rid of the "you can't gain AP while AE is running" condition, which doesn't really seem necessary.
But I don't want to try to balance the Arcanist paragon path entirely around the power of 1 spell. That leads to very forced builds ("use the one overpowered spell or else your build is bad") and is a real trap for anyone who doesn't know what the 1 overpowered spell is. I'd like all the spells to be roughly in balance -- insofar as that's possible -- and if that leaves the Arcanist overall weak, improve it by some sort of overall buff, not something that says "take this 1 spell or you're wrong".
I'm afraid this is going to get technical. Let's see if I can explain it clearly.
Neverwinter (like other MMOs) is a "client/server game". That means that the server is the ultimate authority for most key gameplay things, and the client (your computer) tries to present to you the server's version of truth as best as it can. (See my explanation of this topic on the bard preview thread from last module if you want to know more.)
In particular, whenever you try to cast a spell, your client has to confirm with the server that you are allowed to, and in particular that the spell is off cooldown. However, your UI is showing to you the cooldowns on a fairly quick timescale. It does that by knowing your current cooldown reduction (called RechargeSpeed in our editor) and computing how much time is left. But the client (or the server, for that matter) isn't looking into the future to see when your RechargeSpeed bonus is going to wear off. So if there's any lag, what can happen is the client can display that your power is off cooldown, but the server thinks it isn't quite yet, and so you press the button for the power, only to have the server respond "sorry, you can't cast that yet".
This is also why you see the cooldown numbers "pop up" when AE wears off. That's not a bug per se (although it might be a poor UI choice, or a poor power design choice). It's just that when your SpeedRecharge is very high, your client might think there's only 1 second left of recharge time. But if AE wears off at that very moment, you actually have 5s of recharge time still (this is the "having the CDR so high makes the cooldown bug worse" issue mentioned in my previous post). So you see the 1s change to 5s. It's a lot like an Internet download: if the download meter says "you have 20 minutes left", and then your Internet speed drops a bunch, it might all of a sudden switch to saying "you have 40 minutes left". You didn't lose any download, though. It's just that the best estimate of the remaining download time (like the NW UI's best estimate of your remaining cooldown time) has changed because the rate at which you are downloading (cooling down) has changed.
So much for the explanation. What if anything can be done about it?
Well, unfortunately, there's no perfect fix. Rebuilding the client so that it can "look into the future", figure out when your SpeedRecharge might change, and calculate the results, is a huge task. (Note even the server doesn't do that!) So the "numbers pop up" issue is going to stay, as long as AE is giving you a big SpeedRecharge bonus.
A thing that *might* be possible is we could at least have the client ask the server before it lights up the button. Then at least you wouldn't have the situation where you thought you could cast the power, and you can't. There are some subtleties here, so as to do this in a way that doesn't cause other problems, but it's possible. It's a Software ask, though, not something I can do in Design data, so it wouldn't happen right away. And there's some risk it just wouldn't happen (because there are so many demands on Software's time).
There is another possibility: our engine supports not only directly giving you SpeedRecharge (remember, having more SpeedRecharge just means that, as long as you have it, 1s of real-world time counts as 3s or 5s or whatever of cooldown time). It also supports directly subtracting cooldown from powers (called PowerRecharge). So what I could do is rebuild AE so that, instead of it giving you x3 SpeedRecharge for 10s, it instead subtracts 1s from your spell cooldowns every half second (using PowerRecharge). Same benefit... over 10 seconds, you get 30s worth of cooldown reduction either way. And there's no UI "snap back" when AE expires in this world. Instead, when AE expires, the 1s subtractions just stop happening. And the cooldown meter stays where it is. So that's good. HOWEVER: the bad part of this version would be that the cooldown meter would display, not the time left till the spell is ready, but the full time. In other words, on a 15s CD spell that you just cast, the current version shows (while AE is up) 5s... 4s... 3s... 2s... 1s... ready! But the new version would show 15s and then every 1s of real-world time, that 15s would go down by 3s. So you'd see the normal, unadjusted cooldowns, but the numbers would just go down much faster (in fact, 3x faster). Would people like that better? It's a pretty easy change for me to make.
One minor point: in version 2 (PowerRecharge), I can adjust by subtracting a % of the total cooldown instead of just 1s. Doing that would make Encounter spells with longer cooldowns a more viable choice for AE. So that's another option, if people want it.
Comments
If you look at the script and do not see enough to smile about , it is on you.
I am happy with the changes in ST and in AoE and I do not need to test anything to know my future build already, the benefit is that obvious.
I did not said that it is a build with noticeably more dmg output .
I said- enough to smile about.
A bit of help in aoe. Not enough to close the gap, but enough to smile about.
In ST we got more sustain damage, and a playing field that is fair.
We never received so much work and attention.
But -noticeably more output -no, is not the case.
.
I advertise with my TR and Warlock and get into groups instantly. Maybe it has more to do with player expectations and wrong assumptions, but whatever the issue it doesn't help the class either way. I personally think too many Wizards struggle in the 60k - 70k range to put out reasonable damage where other classes have a much more linear progression thanks to higher power magnitudes. I'm a little bit frustrated that this isn't acknowledged and changed.
Also I spected changes in feats to alow new playstyles, options to gain recharge speed, etc. As I see now, they will make thaumaturge viable and spellstorm a bit better in aoe. Not enough for me for that long wait, and we know when this is finished you wont look at wizards in 5 years or more.
You can buff shield, Maelstrom and other HAMSTER powers what you want, they will be useless.
I think the nerf to Arcane Empowerment was neccesary mainly because of the lag / CD issues cant be fixed for everyone due to lag / ping but you need to compensate that with the single target powers dmg we use during AE. Or extend the duration 2-3 seconds.
I hope you still have more in the room
Caturday Survivor
Elemental Evil Survivor
Undermontain Survivor
Mod20 Combat rework Survivor
Mod22 Refinement rework Survivor
On the Thaum side it's just buffs across the board, and Smolder will no longer be a pile of HAMSTER; I'm anxious to test if Ray of Frost + Directed Flames is going to be a return to the glory days of freeze-burning your enemies to snowy ash. Even Fanning the Flames might not be garbage. As soon as this hits Test I'll be over the parsing and comparing.
Eye of the storm need remove the cooldown, because mage doesnt have stat bonus and small dexterity
Ray of enfeeblement and Entangling Force do not deal full damage during Arcane Empowerment due to the fact they have dot damage, need fix
Arcane Empowerment need remove the cap on action points during the duration of the daily skill
Assailing Force and Nightmare Wizardry need up chance
Chilling Presence up to 1% for stack
Arcane Mastery up to 1% for stack
Icy Terrain up to 450
Ray of frost up to 70
Control Mastery change, instead of a bonus to control, add 5% crit damage
Before Arcane Empowerment Combat skills have double cooldowns, need fix
Oppressive Force need up magnitude
Snap Freeze need up magnitude
Ray of Enfeeblement up to 500
Entangling Force up to 600
Repel up to 600
Storm Spell need up magnitude
Striking Advantage need remove cooldown
Storm Pillar NEED generate AP if you don't hit any targets
Arcane Empowerment: increased damage bonus from 10% to 20%; need speed bonus x5, if x3 need up magnitude to 630
Steal of time need up to 400
Storm Pillar up to 50-90
~20%-25% on ru server (our players are stronger than in the euro), its a lot
I'll also add, as someone that plays all classes, it is MUCH easier to do decent dps on most other dps classes than CW with similar gear. Last thing I want to see is a further reduction in dps (which these changes rally amount to with the Spell Storm nerf).
I strongly urge the development team to take another look at wizard, and talk with some of us that know the class before pushing out these changes. I do play many versions of CW too, having 10 loadouts on my main, Talia. Overall, this is a very disappointing set of proposed changes.
My suggestion for your consideration, especially those less excited about the Wizard changes here, is to wait until the patch hits Preview to test. Once tested, it will be helpful to provide objective feedback.
We experienced a process with the Bard changes where a patch went to Preview and further adjustments were made afterwards.
If you’re as passionate as I think you are, please be supportive.
Getting with Wiz's that have been playing a long time will certainly be a big help.
> Well I did spect not only changes to magnitudes or numbers but also changes to some powers for example Lightning bolt for something like Chain Lightning (targeted spell with jumps) to make AoE more fluid and more front damage fast like other classes and not the slow buggy lighning bolt.
>
> Also I spected changes in feats to alow new playstyles, options to gain recharge speed, etc. As I see now, they will make thaumaturge viable and spellstorm a bit better in aoe. Not enough for me for that long wait, and we know when this is finished you wont look at wizards in 5 years or more.
>
> You can buff shield, Maelstrom and other <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> powers what you want, they will be useless.
>
> I think the nerf to Arcane Empowerment was neccesary mainly because of the lag / CD issues cant be fixed for everyone due to lag / ping but you need to compensate that with the single target powers dmg we use during AE. Or extend the duration 2-3 seconds.
>
> I hope you still have more in the room
Chain Lightning would be awesome! ⚡️
> i would ask if the cw can be reviewed again and to have the following changes implemented:
>
> Ray of frost magnitude increased from 55 to 60
>
> Scorching Burst magnitude increased from 30-80 to 45-80
>
> Chill Strike Spell mastery magnitude increased from 225 to 325
>
> Shatter Strike: Powers with control effects now deal 250 magnitude (up from 150) against CC immune targets
>
> Lightning Bolt Encounter: Remove it altogether or change the animation and targeting to guarantee it hits
>
> Entangling Force: In Spell Mastery change it so it grants an additional attack where you can slam the enemy into the ground after raising them in the air.
>
> Icey Terrain: reduce cooldown by 3 seconds
>
> Ice Storm: Instead of the knockback effect have it freeze all enemies within its radius for 4 seconds for 650 magnitude and for cc immune targets let it do 750
>
> Maelstrom of Chaos: Reduce the animation time and increase the area of effect. Currently the animation time is so long that by the time it hits the enemies have already moved from the location.
>
> Imprisonment was disliked only because it didnt do any damage. All you had to do was add damage to the power and it would have been acceptable. Give us back Imprisonment as an aoe with 325 magnitude and Spell Mastery makes it ST 450 magnitude with the arcane conduit effect.
>
> Also keep in mind that all the other classes have multiple encounters that hit for more than 500 magnitude and arcanist and thaum both barely have any. I think between the 2 paths they have 2 encounter power that are over 500 and for one of them that is only in Spell mastery slot
>
> None of these are big changes except for Ice Storm and Imprisonment but i believe they would go a long way in making players a little bit happier with the cw.
Entangling Force - Star Wars telekinetic smash, yes please! 🙏
6 months to obtain such changes, which concern adjustments of magnitude and cd only, we could really have hoped for better. We get a large list of changes that masks the weakness of their impact. The objectives seemed clear to me, however, to improve the aoe of the cw in a substantial way and the ST in a more limited way. For the ST we have the opposite.
Tenebrae
Class Skill
After using a Control Encounter power allies within 30' of you deal 2% more damage for 6 seconds. This effect does not stack.
-
Please, can we delete this class skill?
Plain delete.
Why do I have a class skill that does not benefit me at all?
Nobody knows that we are buffing them.
Nobody cares that we are buffing them.
And to say the truth- I do not want to buff anybody by default.
Buffing others should be a choice, not mandatory, on a wizard.
.
There are buffing spells, but it is a cutting choice if it is worth to use a spell slot, and usually it is not.
That skill is a vestige of premod 16 skillttree and unfit for current gameplay.
Even back then it was a CHOICE if one would take this feat for Master of Flame buffing build.
.
If my role is dps, to deal damage, my Class Skill should help me to deal damage.
Why am I mandatory buffing the other dps to deal more damage than me?
Because I like to be passed on party and raid invites?
@rgutscheradev
Ray of Enfeeblement and Arcane conduit are the essentially the same thing. Before we had Arcane Conduit we had Imprisonment and the only reason players didnt use it was because it didnt do any damage. When the players asked for you guys to add damage to it you decided to replace it with Arcane Conduit which is not what the players asked for. PLEASE give us back Imprisonment (chains enemies in place for 3 seconds) and simply add some damage to it (250-300 mag) and when it is in Mastery have it change to ST with more damage.
Also there are quite a few enemies that have very cool lightning attacks like in Vollusk and DBV. Maybe taking one of their animations and tweaking them a bit would work better for the Lightning Bolt Encounter. Or maybe the Clerics burning arrows and just change them blue and white.
Let me try to explain my thinking. Lots of details involved, so hang on, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
First, the balance issues (second will be UI issues and the infamous "cooldown bug").
AE is pretty different from other powers, so it's a bit hard to figure out. In the end, I looked at it like this:
* When you cast AE (old version), you'll get to cast about 10 Encounters.
** 10 is an approximation. It will vary by build, of course. And you have to be aware of stuff like "8 Encounters with AE, and then all 4 Encounters have 1s left" might be similar to "10 Encounters, w/ 2 on full cooldown and 2 on medium-low".
* Suppose each of those Encounters has (on average) 500 Mag. You're getting a total of 5500 Mag out of your AE, over 10 seconds (due to 10% bonus). (Actually probably more like 5300 for weird math reasons I won't go into here.)
* If you cast Ice Knife, you just do 1800 Mag. Let's use new Ice Knife at 2000 Mag, because it would be silly to balance AE against older weaker powers.
* However, Ice Knife is fast. If you cast Ice Knife, you still have the rest of your 10s. In that time, you can cast 4 Encounters.
* So really AE is giving you +6 Encounters over what you'd normally do. That's ~3000 Mag of damage. Still a LOT more than other encounters.
* If AE gave you +4 Encounters rather than +6, that seems about right. That's ~2000 Mag of damage, comparable to other Dailies.
* Changing the recharge bonus from x5 to x3 roughly gave me 8 encounters during my AE cast (instead of 10). So that's how I tuned it.
The above are the basics. A few more points:
* x5 to x3 maybe sounds like more than it is. (Note the 10 --> 8 effect at the end.) That's because, for a 15s CD power, increasing your CD speed by x5 takes it from 15s CD to 3s CD. You saved 12s. But at x3 speed, you go from 15s to 5s. You save 10s. Saving 12s is definitely better than saving 10s. But not by as much as you might think just looking at the initial numbers.
* Because AE is doing damage based on your other spells, it's hard to balance things just by bringing other stuff up. A lot of the encounters (including all but 1 of the Arcanist's) had their Mags go up, typically by decent amounts (~25%), and so w/o touching AE directly, it's hard to keep it in line.
* Having the CD speed so high makes the cooldown bug worse (see next post).
* If AE still seems weak compared to other daily choices, tweaking the % damage bonus is an easy way to boost it a bit. I could also get rid of the "you can't gain AP while AE is running" condition, which doesn't really seem necessary.
But I don't want to try to balance the Arcanist paragon path entirely around the power of 1 spell. That leads to very forced builds ("use the one overpowered spell or else your build is bad") and is a real trap for anyone who doesn't know what the 1 overpowered spell is. I'd like all the spells to be roughly in balance -- insofar as that's possible -- and if that leaves the Arcanist overall weak, improve it by some sort of overall buff, not something that says "take this 1 spell or you're wrong".
I'm afraid this is going to get technical. Let's see if I can explain it clearly.
Neverwinter (like other MMOs) is a "client/server game". That means that the server is the ultimate authority for most key gameplay things, and the client (your computer) tries to present to you the server's version of truth as best as it can. (See my explanation of this topic on the bard preview thread from last module if you want to know more.)
In particular, whenever you try to cast a spell, your client has to confirm with the server that you are allowed to, and in particular that the spell is off cooldown. However, your UI is showing to you the cooldowns on a fairly quick timescale. It does that by knowing your current cooldown reduction (called RechargeSpeed in our editor) and computing how much time is left. But the client (or the server, for that matter) isn't looking into the future to see when your RechargeSpeed bonus is going to wear off. So if there's any lag, what can happen is the client can display that your power is off cooldown, but the server thinks it isn't quite yet, and so you press the button for the power, only to have the server respond "sorry, you can't cast that yet".
This is also why you see the cooldown numbers "pop up" when AE wears off. That's not a bug per se (although it might be a poor UI choice, or a poor power design choice). It's just that when your SpeedRecharge is very high, your client might think there's only 1 second left of recharge time. But if AE wears off at that very moment, you actually have 5s of recharge time still (this is the "having the CDR so high makes the cooldown bug worse" issue mentioned in my previous post). So you see the 1s change to 5s. It's a lot like an Internet download: if the download meter says "you have 20 minutes left", and then your Internet speed drops a bunch, it might all of a sudden switch to saying "you have 40 minutes left". You didn't lose any download, though. It's just that the best estimate of the remaining download time (like the NW UI's best estimate of your remaining cooldown time) has changed because the rate at which you are downloading (cooling down) has changed.
So much for the explanation. What if anything can be done about it?
Well, unfortunately, there's no perfect fix. Rebuilding the client so that it can "look into the future", figure out when your SpeedRecharge might change, and calculate the results, is a huge task. (Note even the server doesn't do that!) So the "numbers pop up" issue is going to stay, as long as AE is giving you a big SpeedRecharge bonus.
A thing that *might* be possible is we could at least have the client ask the server before it lights up the button. Then at least you wouldn't have the situation where you thought you could cast the power, and you can't. There are some subtleties here, so as to do this in a way that doesn't cause other problems, but it's possible. It's a Software ask, though, not something I can do in Design data, so it wouldn't happen right away. And there's some risk it just wouldn't happen (because there are so many demands on Software's time).
There is another possibility: our engine supports not only directly giving you SpeedRecharge (remember, having more SpeedRecharge just means that, as long as you have it, 1s of real-world time counts as 3s or 5s or whatever of cooldown time). It also supports directly subtracting cooldown from powers (called PowerRecharge). So what I could do is rebuild AE so that, instead of it giving you x3 SpeedRecharge for 10s, it instead subtracts 1s from your spell cooldowns every half second (using PowerRecharge). Same benefit... over 10 seconds, you get 30s worth of cooldown reduction either way. And there's no UI "snap back" when AE expires in this world. Instead, when AE expires, the 1s subtractions just stop happening. And the cooldown meter stays where it is. So that's good. HOWEVER: the bad part of this version would be that the cooldown meter would display, not the time left till the spell is ready, but the full time. In other words, on a 15s CD spell that you just cast, the current version shows (while AE is up) 5s... 4s... 3s... 2s... 1s... ready! But the new version would show 15s and then every 1s of real-world time, that 15s would go down by 3s. So you'd see the normal, unadjusted cooldowns, but the numbers would just go down much faster (in fact, 3x faster). Would people like that better? It's a pretty easy change for me to make.
One minor point: in version 2 (PowerRecharge), I can adjust by subtracting a % of the total cooldown instead of just 1s. Doing that would make Encounter spells with longer cooldowns a more viable choice for AE. So that's another option, if people want it.