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My observations on 'action point' gain [beware, numbers inside]
hedgehog8
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 148 Arc User
Hi everybody, I'm in progress of improving my 'sexy wizard' build (probably will even write a guide, cause why the hell not 
), and as a part of my research I got some numbers and info for 'action point gain', decided to share it with everyone.
The common knowledge is that you need 100% or your Action point to cast your daily. I'll refer to it as %A further (so 5%A mean 5% of an action point), so here's the stuff that I got:
Magic missile: each hit adds 1%A by default. Note, that the whole combo '1+1+3' actually counts as 3 hits, not as 5. I also measured the speed of attack, and got about 26-27 'combos' per minute (meaning every minute of autoattacking you restore roughly 80 %A). An interesting note - crits are also applied to the last 3 hits as a group: so if you crit on the 3-rd part, where you launch 3 missiles at once, all 3 will be critical. You can't crit on only one of them. First and second hits are of course separate and independent.
Chilling cloud - personally, I was not impressed, it has same speed as missile (combo is hit-hit-2_hand_cast), the %A gain seems almost same, mb a bit lower.
Storm pillar - it makes only 2 hits at full charge, and is a stable 3% per full charge. Overall it seemed less effective, so I didn't study it much further.
Ray of frost - suddenly ***** everywhere. I don't know how or why, but it keeps filling the whole bar in about 20-25 seconds(couldn't measure exact values, because I didn't fully understand it's mechanics yet, and for long time tests crits kept getting in the way). With my crit build, I got a stable 18 second fill (from 0 to 100%A), and the best time was 12 seconds. Most likely it stacked with 'controlling action' feat somehow, which is nice.
Chill strike gives 4%A per cast. For it and 2 spells that go next there is no effect from 'spell mastery' on %A gain.
Entangle gave 6%A, but I'm sure 1%A came from 'controlling action' feat, so it's 5%A by itself.
Timesteal was very tricky. When I cast it on dummies, it gave a stable 30-36%A (maybe it's 10 for each target), but on the field it ranged from 10 to probably 20%A (really hard to measure exact values in battle without <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> allies, cause it takes some time), and there were like 6+ targets.
Conduct of ice - no action point gain(at least for me). Surprise mother**cka!
Since I didn't use other spells much, I didn't get info for others, sry about that (sort of tired to continue now). If someone is interested, I will post some info and thoughts on my crit build(mb tomorrow), which turned out to be fairly effective (my record with all the lucky crits was 8 seconds fill on lvl 40, even though I messed up my base stats badly, so it's probably possible to make it even faster and or at least more stable). I managed cast my 'daily' 7 times while we were kicking the zombie boss in the 'fight the pit' skirmish didn't get into other instances much (auto search is either broken or everyone is on lower level)
PS I can say, that those experiments were so dangerous, that I lost my hair, so don't try to do that an home. I mean seriously, on last beta weekend my char had a beautiful hair, but when I logged in 2 days ago suddenly I was completely bald
PPS I read that a cat companion increases crits, but it costs those 'iron bars' things. Anyone know if other companions improve crits? I believe a hawk would, but I couldn't get it(buying zen seemed too troublesome)
), and as a part of my research I got some numbers and info for 'action point gain', decided to share it with everyone.The common knowledge is that you need 100% or your Action point to cast your daily. I'll refer to it as %A further (so 5%A mean 5% of an action point), so here's the stuff that I got:
Magic missile: each hit adds 1%A by default. Note, that the whole combo '1+1+3' actually counts as 3 hits, not as 5. I also measured the speed of attack, and got about 26-27 'combos' per minute (meaning every minute of autoattacking you restore roughly 80 %A). An interesting note - crits are also applied to the last 3 hits as a group: so if you crit on the 3-rd part, where you launch 3 missiles at once, all 3 will be critical. You can't crit on only one of them. First and second hits are of course separate and independent.
Chilling cloud - personally, I was not impressed, it has same speed as missile (combo is hit-hit-2_hand_cast), the %A gain seems almost same, mb a bit lower.
Storm pillar - it makes only 2 hits at full charge, and is a stable 3% per full charge. Overall it seemed less effective, so I didn't study it much further.
Ray of frost - suddenly ***** everywhere. I don't know how or why, but it keeps filling the whole bar in about 20-25 seconds(couldn't measure exact values, because I didn't fully understand it's mechanics yet, and for long time tests crits kept getting in the way). With my crit build, I got a stable 18 second fill (from 0 to 100%A), and the best time was 12 seconds. Most likely it stacked with 'controlling action' feat somehow, which is nice.
Chill strike gives 4%A per cast. For it and 2 spells that go next there is no effect from 'spell mastery' on %A gain.
Entangle gave 6%A, but I'm sure 1%A came from 'controlling action' feat, so it's 5%A by itself.
Timesteal was very tricky. When I cast it on dummies, it gave a stable 30-36%A (maybe it's 10 for each target), but on the field it ranged from 10 to probably 20%A (really hard to measure exact values in battle without <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> allies, cause it takes some time), and there were like 6+ targets.
Conduct of ice - no action point gain(at least for me). Surprise mother**cka!
Since I didn't use other spells much, I didn't get info for others, sry about that (sort of tired to continue now
). If someone is interested, I will post some info and thoughts on my crit build(mb tomorrow), which turned out to be fairly effective (my record with all the lucky crits was 8 seconds fill on lvl 40, even though I messed up my base stats badly, so it's probably possible to make it even faster and or at least more stable). I managed cast my 'daily' 7 times while we were kicking the zombie boss in the 'fight the pit' skirmish didn't get into other instances much (auto search is either broken or everyone is on lower level)PS I can say, that those experiments were so dangerous, that I lost my hair, so don't try to do that an home. I mean seriously, on last beta weekend my char had a beautiful hair, but when I logged in 2 days ago suddenly I was completely bald
PPS I read that a cat companion increases crits, but it costs those 'iron bars' things. Anyone know if other companions improve crits? I believe a hawk would, but I couldn't get it(buying zen seemed too troublesome)
Post edited by hedgehog8 on
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Comments
I can definitely vouch for this if you have the feats that grant action point gain when using control powers and when you crit! I have a control wizard capped at level 50, and when jumping into groups with other mages, they freak out when they see me using my dailies over & over again like encounters, sometimes with arcane singularity ready to go again before the previous singularity is finished due to AP again from crits. Ray of frost really fills up the bar in between!
I know, I thought that it would work like that, but in practice my action bar still isn't getting filled much even if I do this combo on huge (10+) crowds.Either I'm missing something vitally important, or there is some bug. A crazy possibility is that it works differently because I lvled up my char last weekend, and now I'm having some bugged version. After losing my hair I would not be surprised by anything here.
Sometimes it really works well and giver like 60% easily(and the crowds are even not that large), but most often ST somehow has low effect
And for crits part - yep, that's exactly how I got my '8 seconds' record. But in this thread I didn't stop on ctits' effect much on purpose, just wanted to list values I got for 'unmodified' skills.